The New Orleans That I Once Lived In No Longer Exists

On August 29, 2005-a date that will live in infamy-the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, was suddenly, if not deliberately attacked by natural forces in the forms of Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita. The “infamy” involved in this tragic set of circumstances proved, at least in part, to be in the responses (or lack thereof) of federal, state and local officials to the resulting tragedy. 

In short, the bureaucrats and fat cats dropped the ball; and Joe and Jane Average ended up paying for the piss-poor planning and lack of foresight on the part of their local and federal officials.

The New Orleans I once lived in no longer exists; except in my fading memories and, I suspect, in the memories of all of us who are now a part of the vast New Orleans Diaspora. I count myself among them even though, strictly speaking, I am more of an expatriate. I’ve heard it said that “you can’t go home again,” and that “you can never step in the same river twice.” If these maxims hold true, then so it is with the land of my nativity, the city that I called home for nearly 30 years of my life.

               How easily it seems that “The City That Care Forgot” and that the rest of the country remembered during Mardi Gras, the Essence Festival, Jazz Fest and any given Super Bowl Sunday that occurred in the now renovated and re-christened Mercedes-Benz Superdome, became “The City that the rest of the country Forgot to Care About” when the levees failed. Those of us from New Orleans don’t have the luxury of that particular bit of selective memory.

               It could be that the city that I once lived in was fading into to distant memory long before Katrina and Rita came along, and that was one of the reasons I left; maybe I’m just waxing nostalgic now. Being the sensual place that it was, I suppose New Orleans has always existed, in part, as more of a sensory experience for me than as an actual location. My memories of the place always involved something I deeply and vividly saw, heard, smelled, tasted or felt; and when it comes to  stimulating those senses there are few, if any cities (in the United States at least) that could hold a candle to The Big Easy.

               For some the city represents a fun getaway…where you can literally “get-away” with doing and saying things you wouldn’t dare to do or say anywhere else. For some it represents the frustrating, and apparently inherent ineptitude of the Napoleonic Laws that permeate Louisiana politics; for some it represents the apparent corruption of our local politicians and law enforcement officials, as made infamous in the movie from which the city derived one of its more colorful nicknames.

              

               I remember living Uptown at one time, between Tchoupitoulas and Magazine Street. I lived within walking distance of a Canal Villere Supermarket and a famous local music hall named Tipitina's. One night I was even treated to an impromptu sidewalk serenade at Tipitina's when the immortal Lady T, Ms. Teena-Marie performed one of her famous concerts there. I say "impromptu sidewalk serenade" because Lady T sold it out of course, and according to the Fire Marshall, wasn’t ‘nobody else getting up in there!

As far as I’m concerned New Orleans is not just a place, it’s a state of mind, body, heart and soul.

I remember one of the last times I went back home, prior to Katrina, my Dad took my brothers and I on a road trip to the Houma/Thibodeaux area of Louisiana; these were the rural cities where his side of my family, and my Mom’s side originated; and the places we respectfully referred to as “The Country.”

“I’m gonna show ya’ll the house where I was born.” He had said.

In spite of the fact that he had been largely absent during my upbringing, I idolized my Dad, and I was looking forward to seeing the place where the man, the myth and the legend originated. I was somewhat nonplussed, however, when we reached our destination.

               My Dad got out of his truck and gestured at the place with a sweep of his hand, then stood staring silently. Along with my younger siblings, I got out and beheld what basically amounted to an abandoned and decaying pile of something that used to be a house, but was now a vine covered ruin.  We could see that my Dad was experiencing something on some deep, emotional level that he couldn’t quite articulate, so we remained respectfully silent, even as we exchanged furtive, quizzical glances with one another.

For me New Orleans represents an ancestral home; the place where my grandparents are buried, along with my great-grandparents, all the way back to my maternal ancestor Joseph Champagne, my sandy-blonde haired, blue-eyed three times great grandfather, the son of a former slave and her former owner. So in a sense, I suppose what the loss of my city represents most to me is a loss of a sense of history and belonging.

Just like the biblical Abraham with his son Isaac, or Moses and his son Gershom, I too feel as if I am a stranger in a strange land; and I am raising my son in a place that is not his father’s ancestral home. That wouldn’t bother me so much, were it not for the fact that the place this his father remembers no longer exists; and I feel as if there is not now, nor will there be in the near future, a place to which I may one day travel in order to instill in my son a sense of identity, pride and familial history.

Damn.

Dad, I think I know what you were going through now….

Julie Kuralt
The Art of Perseverance

It was the most emotionally draining semester of my college career. My line of thought was that art school would be fun, that it would be just like art club in high school—drawing, painting, and having a good time with people who had similar personalities and interests. The thing with me is that I'm not really that talented in art; I’d switched to the major in hopes of improving my skill because I enjoyed it.

My 2D Design teacher was on maternity leave, so we had a substitute for the first two-thirds of the semester, another professor in the art department. This lady didn't give us a chance to learn—she expected us to be brilliant on the get-go. It wasn't like in high school when art class was fun and you were graded on how hard you tried. I was expected to make beautiful and perfect pieces of art, or fail.

For our first 2D Design assignment, we were to come up with eight sketches dealing with abstraction (stripping something down to its simplest form, but to where you can still tell what it is—like on street signs). Then we would bring the sketches to her and she would pick the best two for us to scan and edit on the computer for the final project. When I went up to get mine checked, she said I'd done them all wrong and that I'd have to start completely over. 

"You don't have a project at all. This was not the assignment."

I followed the exact definition of abstraction from the assigned reading out of the book, but somehow I'd managed to do it completely wrong. She didn't care to keep her voice down about it, either.

Embarrassed and confused, and with no further instruction, I walked back to my station and spent the entire day trying to complete two projects. I got home around 8:00 p.m., from that 9:30 a.m. class. She told me not to draw things from my head, but from actual objects. Maybe she was trying to teach us the basic elements, but I’d always thought creativity was a part of art. I ended up with a C- on the assignment.

It didn’t take long before I’d decided to switch back to the English major, but it was too late into the semester to drop the classes without resulting in some WF’s.

Then there was Drawing 1. We drew boxes. Lots of boxes. And curtains. Countless curtains. Objects. Plants. Vases. Over and over. It was monotonous and strenuous, especially when I had to hang my piece up next to the prize winning masterpiece. Then we moved on to humans. All my subjects ended up with disgusting balloon heads, terribly disproportioned to the rest of their bodies. Hours of work poured into a middle school-level drawing, at least compared to the others. I was embarrassed, ashamed to admit it was mine. But this teacher was kinder, at least. He told me how much I’d improved, to keep working, to not be so hard on myself, even if I thought I was in the bottom two percent of the class.

We had to lug huge art supply bags around for Drawing 1, filled with giant art pads, charcoal, erasers, sketch pads, special pencils, all out of our own budget. As soon as I got home, it was back to breaking out the art bag and hacking away at the new drawing assignment, staining my carpet and fingernails black with the charcoal. The hours after class and the weekend were spent fulfilling the number of sketches and drawings for the next class.

During Spring Break, my troubles temporarily lifted.  Some time away let me forget about how horrible I felt every day because of art. I started to think that art wasn't that bad. I thought it was just a work load, but that I was learning a lot. But when we returned from the break, I was reminded that my efforts were worthless. No matter how hard I tried, my best was never good enough. I made bad grades, which made me feel bad about myself.

Once my real teacher returned for 2D Design class, my grades did improve. She was still hard, but at least she was nicer about it and had sympathy for someone who didn’t know what they were doing. I started making B’s, anyway. She even let us redo some of our old works, which replaced some of my C’s.

And then we had the color scheme project. We had to produce four pieces, all the same picture but different color schemes: monochromatic, analogous, complementary, and split complementary. The hues of these colors had to exactly match up or points were taken. I had never worked harder on anything in my life. I produced something that even I was proud of. I drew my friend on a computer program I could barely use. She looked realistic enough to me, or at least recognizable. I was so happy with it that I showed it off to anyone who would look. Everyone thought it was great and gave me the praise I so desperately craved. It had intricate details down pact. All the shadows looked amazing. And with all the color schemes, frankly, it looked really cool. I fully expected a comeback from Julie Kuralt in the eyes of the art department. A+, a grade worth celebrating, a grade that could finally help me not pull up my grade.

But when I got the project back, I turned it over and found a B-. The hues were too saturated. Disappointment shot through me. This was something of the final straw for me. I was so tired and angry with the impossible expectations from the art teachers that I had to leave the room. My absolute best resulted in barely a B. So overwhelmed by the whole semester of disappointment after disappointment, I found myself crying in a bathroom stall.

Finishing that semester was one of the happiest moments of my life. I’d put myself through a lot of self-pity and even hate for never being good enough. But now I think maybe just the type of art—and their standards—was just not for me. After a few months, I was able to pick up a pencil and draw again. And after the cringing subsided, I found myself able to enjoy it and work on improving on my own time. I just learned about my own endurance and that surely I could handle any other scholastic demands.

Sarah Lisanick

Sarah Lisanick

"Pick up your wrists," she told me again.
    She nodded her head with the suggested rhythms of the piece I was butchering.  When I blew an accidental and trotted past the legato marks, she circled them and insisted I repeat the surrounding four to six measures until I no longer needed the music. 

    Sarah Lisanick played the piano exquisitely.  She was a bespectacled, short-haired blonde with a love of floral prints and pearls. She taught more than technique; she nurtured the unteachable.

    In the second week of my study with her, she figured out my secret: I was a lazy sight reader. Instead of working out the rhythms and actual notes, I would ask my teacher to play a piece once for me, then I would play it by ear.  I had never progressed in my sight reading abilities because my old teachers hadn't figured out what I was doing.  Mrs. Lisanick nailed it in week two.
    The work of sight reading was excruciating to me.  I think it utilized a part of my brain that would’ve rather been left alone.

    She studied with Béla Bartók.  To me, this makes her something akin to royalty.  In the genealogy of musical training, this makes her my pedigree. 

    My ear pulled away from Beethoven and Chopin; no matter that these are the masters to learn when developing technique, she eschewed them for my sake and brought me Erroll Garner.  She filled my head and ears with Johnny Mercer.  She introduced me to Stephen Sondheim. 
    "You need to work out the counterpoint between the hands.  There is a slight syncopation toward the end of the measures that is truly his signature style."
    "I'm really not seeing it.  Would you?"
    She acquiesced and took the bench. 
    "Right here, and again here.  Once more, and then we repeat."
    And then I played it perfectly, not reproducing her nuance but creating my own.  There is great intelligence in the balance of Sondheim's harmonies, but the beauty of his lines can be devastating.

    I saw her for the last time a few months before she died.  Her ex-husband John had moved back in with her for the end. 
    "It's so sad," he told me.  "All the time we were apart.  Now something wonderful has happened, but it's too late." 
    She looked the same as I remembered; short, blonde hair, large, thick glasses-- except she wore a housecoat instead of the usual florals and pearls.  We sat for tea and I told her that while I was still studying music, I had switched from piano to voice. 
    If she was disappointed, she didn't show it.  I played a bit for her, to prove that I was keeping up with the piano, even if I was no longer studying formally. 

    In every musical experience I carry her mark.  I feel her love of music, I remember her emphasis on interpretation and her rejection of histrionics.  Interpretation, as an art of the musician, crosses the span of all instruments.  In the drift from piano to voice to guitar and around again, I have discovered something fundamentally changed. On the good nights, when the technique is strong and little more than impulse, my hands and throat have become conduits for something greater. Mrs. Lisanick molded me into an instrument.

Down by the River

            Along the RiverWalk is a beautiful and relaxing place called Rotary Park. On one side across the path are four gray concrete picnic tables with two small barbeque pits that are imbedded into the ground. Just behind the tables is a cliff with a line of many tall and bushy green trees blocking the view of the Chattahoochee River.

             Rotary Park is a peaceful place to be. The wind blows making the tree branches shake and creak. You can hear different birds chirping from every direction. A motor boat passes by on the river sending ripples of water to splash near the edges of the cliffs.

             A few feet away, two husky looking men stand on the dock loading their boat into the river with their shiny red truck. Once the men get into their boat, they speed quickly away up the river, laughing.

             On the other side of the path is a big area of green grass thick enough to cover your toes. Lying on the grass is a neon pink frisbee, left behind by people who were enjoying the big space and peaceful scenery.  

The Tower

Standing tall and mighty with grace and honor, the clock strikes eleven and a beautiful melody rings as the heart of the campus beats. With lights shining so bright on it as if being honored; its stable foundation keeps the posture and stamina. Being filled with history and bringing unity to the old and the new, the tower attracts life to it as though it's a star in the sky. Watching moths cling to it like a light and the moon shining down, smiling upon it like it knows a secret. It stands with pride being the highest point on the grounds. It looks down at no one, with red and yellow bricks mixed together, making different levels until reaching the top of the tower.
     The heart of the campus beats slowly, la de la de la de la, as if time slows down to capture each moment and scene. The face with so many eyes sees white, black, yellow, brown, and caramel unite as one to make a society filled with love and change. As the melody ends the clock smiles and waits until it can share its beautiful chime with its family, as it has for many years.

The Hockey Game

The Columbus Civic Center is an enormous building, covered with glass windows and inside there are stairs leading to the second level and concession stands all around. It’s a place where lots of people come together to enjoy a rowdy game. The smell of popcorn and nachos is everywhere and you can feel the coldness as you pass by the ice cream. The people in the long lines waiting patiently for an ice-cold beverage are making friends with the other fans. Faithful Cottonmouth fans wear Cottonmouth jerseys. Little kids walk around carrying snow cones and cotton candy is all over their faces. It feels like winter inside because of the large, white ice rink. Fans are cheering wildly and waving their hands in the air for their team. Fans near the rink bang on the plexiglas. The glass is still rattling even after they stop shaking it. Everyone goes crazy when the opposing team starts to fight.  The crowd gets very excited when the free t-shirts start being thrown over their heads.  As the Cottonmouths win their game, all you can hear is the roaring excitement from the proud and overjoyed fans.

100 Yards

Once you make your way past the Romanesque pillars and the massive bronze soldier statue at the entrance the National Infantry Museum, and pass into this “temple of the grunt,” you'll find a special stretch of exhibits. They're on an inclined pathway.

The slope leads you up, and takes you back in time through a rich military history.

The “Last Hundred Yards” exhibit is a celebration of the heroics of our nation’s infantry. The name is a reference to how these foot soldiers clear out the final line of enemies in battle.

As you make your ascent, you’ll come across dioramas showing some of the great battles of our country’s history, from the American Revolution to the current War in Iraq. The figures in the exhibit are not merely mannequins, but rather casts of active duty soldiers. From antique muskets to state-of-the-art tanks, the displays throughout are genuine, as is the admiration for the bravery of the Infantry.

In 100 yards, we commemorate over 200 years of courage and sacrifice.