2/14/2009
Gog and Magog
Oil and water
Matter and anti-matter
How else to explain me at a Mardi Gras parade? Me with
my New England Puritan forebears and Catholic upbringing.
Me, the one that can only stand parties where I know
everyone and have a pre-arranged exit strategy.
When I was a dutiful altar boy, I didn't just see lent as a
season of penance, LIFE was a season of penance.
When my mother told me that some places sneakily take
the last day before Lent for a party I was horrified.
It seemed like cheating.
New Orleans on the other hand sees life as a party and Lent
gives it the religious and cultural legitimacy it wouldn't have
otherwise. Just to show where the priorities are; Lent is 40 days.
This year Mardi Gras (aka Carnival Season) was 50!!
It started on January 6th for the feast of the Three Kings
going all the way until February 24th.
So it was against this backdrop that I went to a Mardi Gras
parade in Covington Louisiana to see a couple of Fernwood
friends (Deryl Boudreau and John Baldwin) don the masks
throw beads all over the place and try to take it all in.
And I'm glad I did.
Some of these things only make sense if you see them and
experience them for yourself and watch the school bands
strut like no one else, hear the music and watch the children's
excitement as the floats came by waving their arms to get
some beads or other goodies thrown from the floats.
I see New Orleans as the long lost grandfather your parents
didn't tell you about growing up. You might have heard the
name and that they were married to so-and-so but everything
else was a secret.
Despite my parents' best efforts, to grow up in the 60's was to
be a child of Rock and Roll. And while New Orleans will always
be a jazz town the blues is the spiritual father to them both.
So in that somewhat hazy musical spiritual sense I feel like I've
discovered part of myself here. Not that I'll be any more fun to
have around at parties just a little more connected to myself and
yet another unique corner of these United States