I was recently emailing with my friend James in the Napa Valley. We met in Kuala Lumpur while working on a conference for the same Huge Software Company and he is now an artist. I typed that I was so sad to see the devastation in New Orleans for all the obvious reasons but also for the sad realization that I never went there! I never saw New Orleans, I never "experienced" New Orleans, the food, the music, the energy, and now I never will. This was his response. I had to share it with you....
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.....Let me describe it for you, as one who never was able to savor the air on a hot summer night in the land of oceans and pirate ships and rum runners and slave owners and jazz...
Here is my attempt at a description.
On arriving, you say to yourself "something has definitely happened here”, it is so palpable, almost erotic. There are so many spirits there, hovering (at least in the ole Nawlins). We can all feel that, even if we had never been there before. That was one of the most evocative and incredibly mysterious cities I have ever been in anywhere in the world. Like an adult Disneyland when, upon entering, you felt as if you were a bit "freer" a bit more liberated and "libertine" - all at the same time. The combination of a history of pirates and wars and slaves and Carribean Voodoo and vampires and the City of the Dead cemeteries that rose out of the ground to spook!
Ah, Nawlins, I miss you. It's like a soul that got a chance to go home. Some spritis made it happen that waters would rush in and then your cities' soul could go back and rest in peace. You have been haunting for too long, Nouvelle Orleans, you sweet mystery, you sweet history. And now you are gone - that erotic soul and the dancing on balconies in the mist of a wild night. Down a streetside of huge billowing willow trees to a night of passion and libation and southern twangs greeting cajun strains. The flowing hoop skirts of a billionaires debutantes ball on a humid evening filled by jazz in the background as voodoo eyes "get your size" behind street vendor stalls. It was a beauty to see. A glorious spirit that the world has lost. I shed a tear about that City, as it was a part of me, a part of anyone's consciousness that has ever been there.
A decadence and style and food incroyable! Imagine if Paris were gone. It would be a trial of your mind that you might find hard to control. You may even lose site of what you ever thought before.
The Spanish/French Catholic bishops walking down the street in a solemn procession of faith under huge white puffy clouds that breathed and poured soft, light rain down into the mystical City.
St. Layfettes Bar on the corner of Ursulines and Bourbon with its dark light candles and libation "to-go" cups. The silent candlelight processions of a group going somewhere, the light from the candles touches their soft faces. Magic, superb.
It is this mystery that I will miss. And I am sorry to say, but I believe this "dark and mystically exotic magic" is gone...forever.
New Orleans died. She will never return. Goodbye, N'awlins. I, for one, loved you.
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