As Promised

I mentioned a few blog posts ago that I needed to write about two fairly profound experiences that I had recently, and as promised, here goes.

K and I went to New Orleans for the 4th of July weekend, as I believe has already been blogged. One of the things I love the most about NOLA is the spirit of the city. No, I am not looking at it through rose-colured glasses; I have been to the Ninth Ward, I have been outside of the Quarter, and I am uncomfortably familiar with the poverty and lousy hand with which New Orleans seems to have been dealt time and time again. In spite of these lousy hands, New Orleans is a city of vibrancy and life, a city prepared to celebrate every little thing, as often as possible. Most people mistake this excess revelry as a form of sinful gluttony, but really, it's just enjoyment of life, I think. Something we could all use a little more of, in my opinion.

The night before we departed NOLA, K and I sank into our air mattress on our friend's living room floor. Keith lives about two blocks from Bourbon, right in the heart of the Quarter. Going to bed in Keith's living room means falling asleep in a pitch-black environment, with the pulse of club music shaking the wooden slats in the floor and stray clips of conversations from passers by on their way to the party. This happens regardless of how early or how late you go to bed.

I had drifted off that night, and was in that place of not-quite-sleeping-soundly-but-not-coherent-either when I heard another sound that I love so much that seems to come only from New Orleans, and Friday night football games in Texas: brass instruments being blown into fortissimo, and a huge bass drum, strapped to someone's chest, being beaten as if his life depended on it.

The sound of New Orleans is something that helps me to identify it. I have, on many occasions, shut off the radio and rolled down the windows of the car as we drive into the city along Decatur, past Jackson Square and Cafe du Monde, simply to hear the city. Every time, my ear strains to pick out that beating of a drum and blowing of a horn that signals to me that we have, indeed, arrived.

I lay on the air mattress that night, approaching 1 a.m. I heard the drum, heard the horns. It was unmistakably one of those fabulous New Orleans brass bands - the kind that awakens in me some primal urge to move and dance. The kind that, if you aren't clapping in rhythym and bopping around to the beat, you must be seriously lacking a pulse. And so, I lay on the air mattress, squirming and dancing as best I could, without waking K. I imagined trailing behind the band, dancing deep into my knees. I imagined the stream of people around me, also dancing. I thought to myself, "how wonderful it would be if this happened a few hours earlier, and I could go out and dance in the street, and feel that music."

For those of you who know me well, you know that there is little that can get me out of bed once I am there. In fact, I would say that the only things that can get me upright again are flat-out emergencies, or gross acts of Mother Nature.

The fear of regret got me off the air mattress that night in New Orleans. It was 1:00 a.m., and I flopped off the side of the bed, threw on my sneakers, grabbed the gate key to the courtyard and my phone, and headed out the door. I bopped along to the corner of St. Ann and Bourbon, where the band had parked itself, and reveled in the music. An impromptu jam session broke out in the intersection, and I found myself tearing up at this spontaneous celebration that just seems to happen organically in New Orleans.

The band finished a few short minutes after I made it to the corner, and I turned back around and went back to Keith's, sort of marvelling at the fact that I based my decision to go solely on the fact that I would have regretted it had I not, instead of the inconvenience caused by getting back out of bed (as lazy as that sounds). I would have woken up in the morning, hypothesizing about how it must have felt, or what it might have sounded like, or how the people would have reacted to the beat. Instead, I had no hypothesis - I had a memory.

I made a decision that next day that, when presented with the opportunity, going forward, I would make a serious effort to PARTICIPATE in life, rather than be a bystander. It's safe to be a bystander, certainly, but is it deeply gratifying? Not a chance.

I had an opportunity to seize my inner New Orleanian a few weeks later here in Austin, but blogging that experience will have to wait!