I can think of no better explanation of my affinity for teaching children than the simple introspective truth that I am still very much a child. I love recess; I love banging on things, climbing, and dancing; I maintain a healthy—although begrudgingly compliant—distrust and disdain of rules that remain under-explained by authorities. But no, I am no longer a child, despite some lingering habits.
To me, the most admirable quality of children is their unbound sense of wonder and its intersection with play. Wonder is a beautiful thing. I like to think it is how we feel when we look at something utterly and unexpectedly new and surprising, and in that first instant of encounter, we are unable to explain what it is, why it is, and our sudden relationship to it. It is surprise and admiration and captivation. It is a child discovering hidden seeds in a woody fruit or a hairy insect it never thought existed. It the visual confirmation that there are, in fact, black swans and they are mean and nasty when you try to pet them. For an adult, it might be watching the sun at dusk, unable to rationalize or characterize the range of colors that mix and change and sway together to make that one indefinable color that we can never make into a crayon but simply call a sunset.
Children exhibit this trait more often because less of the world is known to them, and because their imaginations remain less tarnished with the faculty of logic that senescent adults depend on to explain why things are and how they came to be and how we can relate to it in our environment. How we can reduce its signifying uncertainty and fit this sort-of-new thing into a mental lump of what we already know.
To me, the most admirable quality of children is their unbound sense of wonder and its intersection with play. Wonder is a beautiful thing. I like to think it is how we feel when we look at something utterly and unexpectedly new and surprising, and in that first instant of encounter, we are unable to explain what it is, why it is, and our sudden relationship to it. It is surprise and admiration and captivation. It is a child discovering hidden seeds in a woody fruit or a hairy insect it never thought existed. It the visual confirmation that there are, in fact, black swans and they are mean and nasty when you try to pet them. For an adult, it might be watching the sun at dusk, unable to rationalize or characterize the range of colors that mix and change and sway together to make that one indefinable color that we can never make into a crayon but simply call a sunset.
Children exhibit this trait more often because less of the world is known to them, and because their imaginations remain less tarnished with the faculty of logic that senescent adults depend on to explain why things are and how they came to be and how we can relate to it in our environment. How we can reduce its signifying uncertainty and fit this sort-of-new thing into a mental lump of what we already know.
More than that, as we grow older, we simply don’t get to play the same way. There are obstructions to fun like laws and fitness And there are people that enforce or recommend those obstructions like policemen and doctors. There are places designated for adult fun like bars and strip clubs and golf courses, but even those have rules and their appeal is exclusive and for the most part, they operate without much care for abstract and necessary things like wonder. Instead they become institutions of habit. Not discovery. It seems that the best qualities of children wear away, and adults only get to experience them again through the vicarious joy of their own children if they are serious enough to reproduce.
But New Orleans is different in this regard. The first impediment to fun for adults is most often the law, and in New Orleans there is a conspicuous sense of its absence, or at the very least, a diminished presence that lacks formidability. Its festival culture promotes impulse and imagination and play. It is the kind of spirit that allows us to dance in aquariums, to march to music in the streets without permits after someone died, to occupy public parks without police brutality and intimidation, to adapt spaces and functions of buildings and structures to suit our own pleasures, whether it is a gutted house exhibiting paranormal local theater or a children’s museum hosting several hundred adults dressed in all-white to drink cocktails and play with educational toys until late at night.
There are fewer limits to fun, and because of the accumulation of innovators and artists, as well as the raw beauty of a place that has forever been an absurd confluence of cultures, geography, and creativity, there are ample opportunities to regress "mature" rationale and replace it with wonder and its favorite complementary partner: play. More simply, it is about hands-on discovery.
Since the time I learned to walk, my favorite things have always been elementary, even infantile. I like to run and jump and climb. I like to bang on things. I like to drink liquids (I used to drink gallons of milk every week) I like to dance in crowds. I like to touch stuff that I'm not sure I should touch. And in New Orleans, where restrictions are minority to opportunity, there are several places that encourage the inner-child, that augment our sense of wonder and say to us, “go ahead and play.”
My next few blogs attempt to instantiate this feeling and idea (and to abstract less) through stories in a serial format to break up the content and length. They are simply about how adults get to play in the Big Easy.
My next few blogs attempt to instantiate this feeling and idea (and to abstract less) through stories in a serial format to break up the content and length. They are simply about how adults get to play in the Big Easy.
Since I am finally on break and for the first time in months and I have free time, I will attempt to publish two or three or four entries on this topic.
1) Treehouses (coming very soon)
2) The Music Box
3) Dancing in the Streets
4) Cool shit and lights
1) Treehouses (coming very soon)
2) The Music Box
3) Dancing in the Streets
4) Cool shit and lights
A pictorial preview:
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| Open-bar Children's Museum during white-linen night |
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| The backyard treehouse of NOLA Arthouse on Esplanade |
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| The Music Box |
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| Celebration of the Oaks |
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