AnimaMundi

Happy Mardi Gras!!

 

 

Today's Mardi Gras, all youse Northerners. It's not all about beer and boobs. It's a culminating celebration that has been going on since the world began. It's a way of life. This year's Carnival is one day shy of the longest possible and some people in NOLA may feel that lengthy parade tomorrow. Lent is a fixed time period, but Carnival time is short, medium or long. If you don't believe me, look it up. Since Carnival was so long this year, Easter comes in late April. Easter is never in May. Look it up.

Only in places like New Orleans, they actually celebrate it. Really. The people know how to celebrate and party because they know that like their precariously perched city, we all walk that proverbial tight rope over the abyss.

So, remember as you are working or just walking around that there are people celebrating today and for good reason. They instinctively know about these matters. They know what matters and what's bullshit. We should celebrate along with our brethren. Even Google doesn't know it's Mardi Gras for God's sake. The 100th Anniversary of International Women's is important, but I believe Google should change that later in the day, to, you know, celebrate the end of Carnival, i.e. Mardi Gras.

My blog stats soar** at this time of the year because people are searching for the lyrics to a certain song that is sung at the end of Mardi Gras. It's nonsense and fluidly changes as the tides. This mad search happens every year without fail. So to make things easier for those around the world who want to sing along very loudly with their sisters and brothers in New Orleans. Here ya' go.

"If I Ever Cease To Love"

This particular set of lyrics is from a 1946 "Souvenir Edition"  published by  Dave Frank, New Orleans.
Authorship (improperly) attributed to "Rex Knarf" [franK backwards] and "Re' Kel"

Verse 1:
In a house, in a square, in a quadrant, in a pocket, in a passing lane,
In a street, in a lane, in a road, in the Superdome.
Turn to the left, on the right hand,
you see my true love's abode.
I go there a courting,
and cooing to my love like a dove and defensive end
And swearing on my bend-ed knee, Drew Brees,
If ever I cease to love,
May sheepsheads grow on apple trees, may OT field golds split the uprights
If ever I cease to love.

Chorus 1:
If ever I cease to love,
If ever I cease to love
May the moon be turned to green cream cheese, may the Saints come back from 10-0 at the half with an onside kick
If ever I cease to love

Verse 2:
She can sing who dat, she can play on the piano, 
She can jump, she can dance that NOLA bounce and skanky leg, she can run and catch a clinching interception 

For she's a wonderful girlie,
She's all of them rolled into one looooong second line.
I adore her beauty, she's like an angel dropped from above

May the fish get legs, and the cows lay eggs, like the Colts laid one 

If ever I cease to love,

Chorus 2

If I ever cease to love,

If I ever cease to love,

May we all turn into cats and dogs in a Krewe who knew

If I ever cease to love

*Photo -- Louis Maistro

** Update: As of 3 pm EST over 80 people have searched for the lyrics to this elusive song.

The Oil Dimmed Tide

When Slimbolala starts swearing at his excellent PG-rated family blog, then you know things ain't right. I don't know what the fuck to say. It's gut-wrenchingly sad, outrageously obscene. Exponential clusterfuck is trifling. Man, I don't know. My friend in NOLA, Mark Folse, is uncomfortably numb. The people of the Gulf Coast have taken it up the ass since the Louisiana Purchase for chrissake and then get monumentally fucked by BP since April 20th of this year. 50+ days and no end in sight. We all are to blame though. We keep sucking up oil and gas at an ever increasing rate. You bet that they are going to keep drilling on the cheap with no oversight. Why not? The money's rolling in. That's why. Some states like Louisiana are paid zilch for offshore oil and gas profits. After the bailout fiasco and this, Americans will take to their backyards and couches, not the streets. We are an apathetic people without resolve. We've been bought and sold so many times that most of us don't care about anything except their front lawn and if their golf handicap is under two digits. It's not our problem. We didn't create it. Riiiiiight. 

I have been watching "Treme" on HBO. I have enjoyed it mostly because I love the music of New Orleans. Blake Leyh has done a masterful job of of weaving the music around and through the narrative of the daily struggle of the people of New Orleans after the city was flooded by shitty shoddy levees. Not Katrina. The failure of the US Army Corps of Engineers' levees. Not a hurricane. Got it yet? If New Orleans had the rock solid state-of-the-art levees like the Netherlands (remember Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates?), then there would be no HBO series called "Treme". The show has spawned quite a few blogs and commentaries. It's a good sign that people are watching and talking about the city that is still not OK. The Back of Town blog is particularly strong in the comments. The Times-Picayune blog is also very helpful and thorough in its explanation of what happens to whom, where it happens, why it happens, i.e. a decoder and guide to the episodes. Watching Treme and Dark Brown Waffles are two others that offer other slants on the series. And there are many more if you have the time and interest or even if you don't. There's much to be learned. New Orleans ain't just Mardi Gras and masking. It's all in the music, baby, all in the music.

Ashley Morris, "Treme" Salutes You

Ashley, "Treme" is now in its sixth episode. I think you would like most of it. I also know that you would be on Simon's ass for the verisimilitude  factor. There's plenty of people on the ground looking out for that, don't worry. It's important because all of New Orleans' cultures are trying to speak and be heard. Not an easy thing to do, precisely due to the nuances and feel that many of them invoke on so many levels. You know much better than I about all of that bubbling through. According to most New Orleanians, "Treme" has portrayed your city and its people pretty accurately, more or less. It's the more or less part that is creating the lubricating friction for debate amongst the viewers. That's a good thing. People are talking and thinking about how it has all played out five years later. "Played out" is a relative term, as you well know. It is still playing out, every day, every hurricane season. The next naming season starts in a few short weeks. Oh, and the wetlands restoration has been dealt a fucking blow by BP bigtime. The levees are still not Netherlands-quality and might never be. There has been guilt laid at the feet of those who used papier mache for levee construction. We'll see where that goes, if anywhere.

I don't have to tell you about The Saints and the new mayor. You already knew about that. Greg of Suspect Device who now lives in your great city, said that when your Saints won the NFC Championship it would have killed you if you weren't already dead, big mon. That gave me a good laugh. Actually, you would have had to die again when your Saints got their Superbowl rings. How many times does a young man have to die?

Well, things were on quite a roll until BP had to fuck it up. They will pay. I just hope that the wetlands and wildlife aren't completely screwed, that the fishermen can still bring in their bounty from the Gulf. 

A Long Time Coming

I have been meaning to write something about New Orleans and the vibe that has been building there. It is something that is really hard to describe unless you are a New Orleanian. Just reading what NOLA people have written about the events of the last few months is very heartening to me. It is a joyous time and the city has seemed to have turned an important corner. The Saints winning the Super Bowl during Carnival, Mardi Gras on the heels of those events, a new Mayor, the ACOE guilt for the failed levees laid bare more than 4 years later plus... There is still much to be done. No one knows that better than a New Orleanian. So I would like to salute the people of New Orleans for staying and returning and enduring. It's a daily struggle and will continue to be. However, that struggle is now embued with something new, something different. It's ineffable, but tangible. There is traction. There is momentum. I don't think I can express it better than what is written in this article about Galactic.  

Image Lapoor.tumblr.com

Four Years On

 

 The Flood   Eilen Jewell

Scout Prime at First Draft Says Farewell

Via the Great Greek Adrastos in NOLA, comes the news that Scout Prime of First Draft is bidding farewell. I didn 't know that she was the inspiration for the Rising Tide Conferences  in NOLA. When I started blogging in the spring of 2005 my focus was non-focused. Then the levees breached and 80% of New Orleans was under water. After staring at the tube dumbfounded for days, I started reading some NOLA bloggers for what was really happening. I haven't approached anything remotely comparable to her expertise and diligence on behalf of the city and its people. I always enjoyed reading her posts because they were filled with passion, dogged determination and hope. She is a candle amidst the MSM bullshit. What happened to the city and its people has always and will always remain with me. The horrifically outrageous things I saw and read about gave me an impetus to write something, anything. I thank her and all the NOLA bloggers for the way they roll.  

The New Entreprenuers of New Orleans

Mark Folse has a gritty post up at Humid Beings about an article in The Atlantic. The author of the article should have consulted a few true New Orleanians before she typed publish. Outside entreprenuers with money are NOT the ones who are going to make New Orleans whole again. Sure, some outside investment is happening and will happen that will help New Orleans. It is the "200,000" who came back and started to gut their homes and businesses stud by stud. Those are the true people of the city. A New Orleans professor just returned to her house a few weeks ago almost 4 years after the flood. She cried the first night that she slept in her home with her children. These are the people rebuilding New Orleans. 

Allen Toussaint's "The Bright Mississippi"

Allen Toussaint's "The Bright Mississippi" album covers a lot of ground. From time out of time to now. In light of that, it's not easy for me to say something meaningful and not inane. What am I hearing here? Everything that I have listened to for the last 50 years or so. It's all in there. Like the turns of the river itself, Toussaint takes you on a fugue-slow-drag-funky-parade-strut ride in and out of the musics that have been created and transformed by the Crescent City. The maestro has produced a work of art that needs listening to, again and again. The bottom resonation is felt in the chords and riffs that are part of the whole of African-Caribbean-American musical story. It's a journey we all take when we listen to and hear what is being expressed musically. I can't do the album justice by trying to describe the circle it encompasses. I can only encourage you to buy the album and listen to an important part of African music via the Caribbean as it entered the grand old port of New Orleans and was transformed into a music for the whole world to feast on. For a more thorough look at the album, go to Offbeat:

Henry selected the songs for The Bright Mississippi with “Tipitina and Me” in mind. “There was a certain kind of beauty,” he says. “It sounded old world, it sounded classical, deeply rhythmic like tango, with New Orleans rhythm but also had a deep blues tonality."

Also reviewed at the NY Times and Times-Picayune.

Download 09 Bright Mississippi

Download 07 Blue Drag

Download 02 Dear Old Southland

 PS This album deserves more than I wrote. I will try to do better. I haven't listened to it enough. As I listen again and again, I realize this again and again.

 

Hiatus

I posted three times in April, an all time low for me. Allergies and outdoor work are the main reasons. It's not like I didn't hear lots of new music, drank some noteworthy wines, enjoyed some exceptional home made meals and discovered things on the Internets that I could have linked too. My ability to read books and longish web content is definitely affected by those microscopic bits of pollen and the detritus from last year. I pour loads of eye drops into my eyes everyday and take benadryl. My vision and neuron synapses suffer. So needless to say, I didn't post since what I would have posted would undoubtedly have been more inane than usual. This and Facebook.

So I will return to my impetus to start blogging in the spring-summer of 2005: New Orleans. That good ole warrior, Ashley Morris, would have appreciated this news about "The Wire", especially since David Simon wanted to speak with him about the city of New Orleans. Yeah mon, maybe the exodus will be stemmed and the TV wizard's wand will bring some of your city's soul into livingrooms around the planet. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of the country will finally realize how much the city has given it. There are so many things El Norte; as tangible as an oyster po' boy and as intangible as rolling a certain way.

Then there is that other word smith at Toulouse Street who continually lambasts my soul with his prose-poetry. He's always riffing on something that gets under your skin like scar tissue. His words rumble around within your head for days and weeks.

Oh, one more thing Allen Toussaint's "The Bright Missippissi". Listen to it a few hundred times.

 

"The portion we see of human beings is very small: their forms and faces, voices and words, their ages and race perhaps; beyond these, like an immense dark continent of which their obvious self is but a jetting headland, lies all that has made them--generations vanishing into the barbarous night; accidents and impacts not only on themselves but upon their forebears; the cry of the conqueror, the sighing of slaves. Even the chemical variation of substances--airs, food and waters--are all gathered to that point of light which is the person we know. He himself is unable to communicate, forced to use fluid words as if they were solid, and --if Anglo-Saxon and well brought up--is anyway not expected to wish to communicate at all. And when two human beings meet even in the most simple intercourse, it is not the tiny visible substances, but the immense invisibles that come together. It is these that must determine the liking or disliking over which we have so little control."

Freya Stark

Remember Ashley Morris

 

I miss Ashley Morris. I miss his style, humor and tenacity. He was New Orleans. He was no poseur; didn't have time for that. His rants are unique in the blogosphere. No one can touch him there. Not even close. I doubt that anyone who knew him in one way or another will forget him.

Remember Ashley Morris

He would have been pleased to hear of Wendell Pierce and The Wire's "Treme".