DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS?

The end of August and beginning of September was an emotionally grueling couple of weeks for me and my wife Becky. Not nearly as bad as what the victims of Katrina have faced, but pretty difficult nonetheless. From our nerve-wracking but ultimately needless evacuation at my father's urging from Baton Rouge to Tyler, Texas, which I'm beginning to believe has given me a weird empathy for the hundreds of thousands of displaced New Orleanians now scattered throughout the nation, to our horrified return to southeast Louisiana, to my witnessing of the massive triage for New Orleans at LSU, to communicating with a friend inside the city during the reign of chaos, to eventually housing her here for a few days, to sheltering three cats from the Big Easy, to finding ourselves neck deep in a sea of evacuees, this has been a wild ride.

If you've been reading REAL ART with any regularity since Katrina hit, it's obvious how I've become obsessed with it all. Or maybe it's not obsession; maybe I've had no choice but to be thinking about it constantly--after all, reminders are all over the place, and local news was covering it 24/7 until only recently. The destruction of New Orleans has become, irrevocably, a part of my life.

This would have been hard enough by itself, but, like many other Americans, the Crescent City is extraordinarily important to me. Becky had loved it for decades, and often visited there before I met her. I had only been there once, with my Southern Baptist youth group when I was a teenager--as one might expect, the Baptists showed me only the less interesting aspects of the city, so I might as well have not ever been there. After we had been dating for a few months, Becky absolutely insisted that we visit. I remember getting out of the car into the steamy summer of the French Quarter for the first time: it was like walking into a novel or movie. You just can't be there without feeling like you're in another reality, that magic exists, that there might just be hope for human existence. Like New York, you can feel jazz in the air. We've been there many times since; we spent our honeymoon there after we got married. We were even thinking about living there when I finish grad school.

The possibility that New Orleans might not exist again has made me sick to my stomach on more than one occasion. Spending time and sharing space with evacuees lamenting the city's plight has made things even worse. I'm so fucking sad.

Last Friday while I was inputting data at the office where I work, the internet radio station I was listening to played a Louis Armstrong song I've known for years, "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" It was just too much. I started crying. It was like when my cat Alec was dying and I tried to cheer myself up by playing Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good," a stupid thing to do because I can no longer hear it without getting depressed. Fortunately, I was able to get out of the office quickly, avoiding embarrassment, but now I'm totally haunted by this great song about being deprived of this great city. I hope to god that one day I can hear it without bursting into tears.

Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I’m not wrong
this feeling’s gettin’ stronger
The longer, I stay away

Miss them moss covered vines the tall sugar pines
Where mockin’ birds used to sing
And I’d like to see
that lazy Mississippi
hurryin’ into spring

The moonlight on the bayou
a creole tune that fills the air
I dream about magnolias in bloom
and I’m wishin’ I was there

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that’s where you left your heart
And there’s one thing more
I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$