New Orleans: A Requiem
by Frederick Smock
The other day, I saw storm-clouds brightened by the evening sun, their bruise-purple and -gray formations briefly illuminated, on the underside, just before the sun set and rain settled in for the night. This was a luxury of weather, in a season of hurricanes, of unearthly winds and supernatural tides – for Hurricane Katrina has just laid waste to the once-lovely city of New Orleans.
I remember visiting a college friend New Orleans years ago. Becky worked as a barmaid in the French Quarter – the only European district of America – and she had somehow acquired the sobriquet “Bubbles.” In a few short years she had become a true denizen of the city. We spent a long night drinking, in bars where comic Dick Van Dyke got his start, where legendary blues guitarists still played, and where jazz history was still being made. Come morning, Becky and I grabbed some strong chickory coffee at the Café du Monde, in Jackson Square. It was a supremely cosmopolitan event, unlike anything else the country has to offer.
New Orleans has been a city of the sacred and the profane. The county itself is organized Catholically, into parishes, even for political purposes. And yet a licentiousness rules – a tolerance for alternative lifestyles, sexualities and philosophies. Such an openness often characterizes port cities, but New Orleans has been supreme among them. One evening during my visit, a young woman in a nun’s habit approached, on Canal Street – she suddenly lifted the black skirts over her head, flashed us her naked body, then walked on. Only in New Orleans!
I worry that moralists might weigh in on this disaster – as some of them did in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and during the tsunami disaster in Asia – saying that it is a punishment from heaven for sinful ways. Such a judgment would be wrong-headed, of course, if for no other reason than that New Orleans is much too various to be characterized by any venal sin alone.
New Orleans is a storied city. Truman Capote, Lafcadio Hearn, Shirley Ann Grau, Walker Percy, Kate Chopin and many others have written about the city’s unique Southern charms. The Big Easy has figured into many a detective novel. John Kennedy Toole’s comic masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, was set in New Orleans, and could have been set nowhere else.
It grieves me to contemplate New Orleans in the past tense. But, in the wake of Katrina, I am afraid the past tense is the only responsible one. Witness the sobering facts: At least a million homeless. The city underwater, a toxic swamp. Coffins exploding out of their crypts. Thousands newly dead. Looters rioting. Officials are saying it will take years to rebuild, and who knows what the rebuilt city will be? Very possibly it will not be the New Orleans we have known. A little bit of us would die with the death of this great city, for New Orleans occupies a significant place in our collective imagination.
The warnings for Hurrican Katrina were dire, but not dire enough, evidently. Even President Bush ignored it. On the second day of the disaster, he was in California talking about Afghanistan. On the third day, he did a fly-over of New Orleans on his way back to Washington D.C. We are entering the fourth day of the disaster, and federal aid is only now beginning to move into the area.
Many private citizens did not heed the warnings seriously, either. Perhaps they did not have the resources to flee. We have watched their dramatic rescues, from rooftops, and from highway overpasses, on the news over the past couple of days.
This disaster is so much larger than September 11. New York still exists, after all. And the New York of our imagination still exists. I worry that the New Orleans of our imagination does not exist anymore. And, as much as I grieve for the people of New Orleans, I also grieve for the lost idea of New Orleans.
Let us hope that the city can rebuild, and that it can rebuild to its original design – an uproarious city, multicultural and multilingual, a mardi gras of the mind.
Frederick Smock is poet-in-residence at Bellarmine University.
The other day, I saw storm-clouds brightened by the evening sun, their bruise-purple and -gray formations briefly illuminated, on the underside, just before the sun set and rain settled in for the night. This was a luxury of weather, in a season of hurricanes, of unearthly winds and supernatural tides – for Hurricane Katrina has just laid waste to the once-lovely city of New Orleans.
I remember visiting a college friend New Orleans years ago. Becky worked as a barmaid in the French Quarter – the only European district of America – and she had somehow acquired the sobriquet “Bubbles.” In a few short years she had become a true denizen of the city. We spent a long night drinking, in bars where comic Dick Van Dyke got his start, where legendary blues guitarists still played, and where jazz history was still being made. Come morning, Becky and I grabbed some strong chickory coffee at the Café du Monde, in Jackson Square. It was a supremely cosmopolitan event, unlike anything else the country has to offer.
New Orleans has been a city of the sacred and the profane. The county itself is organized Catholically, into parishes, even for political purposes. And yet a licentiousness rules – a tolerance for alternative lifestyles, sexualities and philosophies. Such an openness often characterizes port cities, but New Orleans has been supreme among them. One evening during my visit, a young woman in a nun’s habit approached, on Canal Street – she suddenly lifted the black skirts over her head, flashed us her naked body, then walked on. Only in New Orleans!
I worry that moralists might weigh in on this disaster – as some of them did in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and during the tsunami disaster in Asia – saying that it is a punishment from heaven for sinful ways. Such a judgment would be wrong-headed, of course, if for no other reason than that New Orleans is much too various to be characterized by any venal sin alone.
New Orleans is a storied city. Truman Capote, Lafcadio Hearn, Shirley Ann Grau, Walker Percy, Kate Chopin and many others have written about the city’s unique Southern charms. The Big Easy has figured into many a detective novel. John Kennedy Toole’s comic masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, was set in New Orleans, and could have been set nowhere else.
It grieves me to contemplate New Orleans in the past tense. But, in the wake of Katrina, I am afraid the past tense is the only responsible one. Witness the sobering facts: At least a million homeless. The city underwater, a toxic swamp. Coffins exploding out of their crypts. Thousands newly dead. Looters rioting. Officials are saying it will take years to rebuild, and who knows what the rebuilt city will be? Very possibly it will not be the New Orleans we have known. A little bit of us would die with the death of this great city, for New Orleans occupies a significant place in our collective imagination.
The warnings for Hurrican Katrina were dire, but not dire enough, evidently. Even President Bush ignored it. On the second day of the disaster, he was in California talking about Afghanistan. On the third day, he did a fly-over of New Orleans on his way back to Washington D.C. We are entering the fourth day of the disaster, and federal aid is only now beginning to move into the area.
Many private citizens did not heed the warnings seriously, either. Perhaps they did not have the resources to flee. We have watched their dramatic rescues, from rooftops, and from highway overpasses, on the news over the past couple of days.
This disaster is so much larger than September 11. New York still exists, after all. And the New York of our imagination still exists. I worry that the New Orleans of our imagination does not exist anymore. And, as much as I grieve for the people of New Orleans, I also grieve for the lost idea of New Orleans.
Let us hope that the city can rebuild, and that it can rebuild to its original design – an uproarious city, multicultural and multilingual, a mardi gras of the mind.
Frederick Smock is poet-in-residence at Bellarmine University.
posted by Jon at 12:44 PM
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