Nola

In my favourite part of my favourite book, Kerouac describes the jazz music scene in New Orleans.

Before I left, I had this picturesque idea of what it would be like.

I fantasised that there would be music overflowing from all the bars and onto the streets. I could almost hear brass and wind instruments in my sub-concious. Contagious music made by amazingly free spirited people littering the town.

I decided that I was going to buy a second hand saxophone (because my birthday wouldn’t be far away) so I could teach myself how to play through the winter.

I imagined myself carelessly passing through the city with my backpack. My rosy cheeks slightly red from the sun and my eyes are the heaviest they’ve been, but I’m the happy.

I’d written this idea down on a piece of paper and tucked it into my travel wallet.

Some days on the road I would take it out and read about everything I expected from New Orleans because everyday that passed, I grew closer to becoming that person.

Now, I’m actually here.

There is music everywhere!
People do dance on the streets and drink whisky and horribly alcoholic concoctions and everything is drums, brass and bass.

People know every word to anything by Curtis Mayfield and ‘Groove Tonight’ by Earth, Wind and Fire blasts live from Jazz Clubs and I’m standing on a bar top dancing with a man that plays the saxophone as though he’s just breathing.

But something’s not right.

When I was in Atlanta (I’ll share my experiences there soon), I stayed with a lovely couple I’d met while in Florence. They spoke about New Orleans a lot. Tosh was from Louisiana and Suzi had met him when they both attended Louisiana State University. I joked that they should just move there because both of their eyes lit up when they spoke about the city.

Suzi replied that she loved it and it was one of her favourite cities to visit but she’d never consider living there and that I “would understand soon enough.”

I think I expected New Orleans to still reflect the 1920’s home of Jazz that I read about in my year 11 History books or the 50's beat generation. 
While at first glance, it does and I did have an amazing time…

I didn’t expect the massive, very obvious divide in classes. 
Actually, I didn’t really expect it from America at all… at least not to the degree I've found it.

It makes me sad to see how people are treated because, as hard as I sometimes try not to, I love people. I love all people.

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”
I really wish people understood this better because compassion is something that everyone deserves, independent of race.

I now understood why they wouldn’t live there. I’m sure that just bellow the surface bubbled a very dark New Orleans.

Where the performers play their instruments, not out of love but out of lust and they crave money because it feeds their addictions.

I was particularly grateful to have met a girl from Victoria at the hostel. She was a music student and talked about a man called Jon Cleary. On the second night we were there, we ventured far from Bourbon and Frenchmen street and went to a small run down Jazz bar, miles from the city centre.

It was a part of town that wasn’t known for its creature comforts or safety, (something we learnt after fire ants attacked us).

Jon wore old faded jeans, a navy blue floppy hat that hid his large red ears and an oversized grey jumper. It looked like his mother had forced him to buy clothes three sizes to big so he could grown into them… which was particularity bazar considering he was well into his fifties.

When Jon sat down at that piano and when his voice rang of pain and heart ache while he begged his love not to leave him. His feet stomping the ground to create an addictive pulsating beat.

I could feel every inch of sorrow and pain that my heart has ever experienced.
I could feel all the sadness and grief that I’ve ever witnessed. 

When he flung his head back and held that note perfectly, my eyes watered and I smiled.

As my soul melted, I thought that perhaps what I had dreamed of New Orleans was still real.

Maybe not everything here died when the dollar learnt not just to speak, but to scream, turning the American dream shallow behind white picket fences.

I'm not sure what I expected to find in New Orleans but I don't think I've found it just yet and I might not by simply hopping from city to city.

Roderick Nash wrote; 

“wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works… it’s an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul.”