Originally posted 09.05.2005

The first time I rode a bike through Treme, a light spray of pebbles struck my backside. I looked over my shoulder and saw a group of children standing in the street, empty handed, watching me. They weren’t menacing, but they weren’t laughing either; the message was clear: I wasn’t just a tourist, but a trespasser, and I wasn’t welcome.

The New Orleans Jazz and Cultural Heritage Festival was the lure that had drawn me, but just as I often find I prefer the cookie to its eponymous chocolate chips, so I found the city, and found more of it every year. This past year in particular, as a more serious distance runner, each morning covering greater swaths of city and park areas, moving outward in a concentric circle from my lodgings. Through the Quarter, up and down the river walk, the downtown, along Esplanade, weaving in and out of side streets at their odd angles off the main thoroughfare. Even through Treme, where it was too early for rock-tossing children, and the men standing on the corners at 6:30 paid me little mind. I started getting to the fest grounds later and leaving earlier, spending time alone outside of the weekend, searching for and finding quiet spots, my own private New Orleans.

One early evening, I treated myself to a glass of wine at a bar on Rampart Street, around the corner from Gentry House on St. Ann’s (the street from which, as you head out of the Quarter, you see the arch of Armstrong Park in a bit of an optical illusion, as though it brandished the street itself). The bartender was a pretty young woman with a big smile, all “welcome to New Orleans, is this your first visit?” and a walking calendar of events for attractions that might interest me: music and barbecues, all-day line-up and all you can eat.

I guess it was obvious, despite my desire to either belong completely or to be a fly on the wall, that I was still a visitor. A tourist: viewer, listener, voyeur. There to take pictures, spend money, support the economy. I was certainly happy enough to engage when appropriate, to rent my bike from French Quarter Bikes; to pack myself off to the Music Factory for a little Astral Project, or my yearly reunion with Mr. Bohren; pick up a coupon for a $1 Abita at Ol’ Toone’s; my annual coffee and beignet at Café du Monde, despite my dislike of chicory.

I don’t know much about how my friends there are faring, except that they’re alive. Some fled the city; others stayed behind and will probably be evacuated. I am utterly heartbroken over the devastation wrought by this disaster, admittedly more so than I would be if I weren’t so emotionally attached to that strange and beautiful city. Having witnessed the poverty there and the vulnerability of the infrastructure of many neighborhoods, I can’t imagine what will be left standing.

I also can’t imagine the impact that this catastrophe will have on the music that is so strongly identified with that part of the country, so uniquely American and so important to our cultural identity. New Orleans and the surrounding areas are the strongholds of Cajun and Zydeco, cornerstones of southern roots music, not to mention the area’s unique brand of R&B and its ongoing jazz tradition. We’ve learned that both Fats Domino and Irma Thomas have turned up, and I found through his Web site that Spencer and family fled to Oklahoma. But it will be some time before we know the status of more obscure musicians. And there will be those we’ll never know.

I feel tremendously fortunate to have seen New Orleans the way it was, and to have had the chance to fall in love with it as I did. I’m worried about my people there, and about the integrity of that historical town. But there’s something more, perhaps deeply selfish, that pulls my heart apart. I’m a creature of habit, even on vacation, always searching for the home I can’t quite find. One of the little paths I’ve worn has been swept away, and I don’t know what I’ll do without it.