Tag: dad

Last week D&I were in New Orleans. We arrived on January 3rd a few days after the carnage that happened on Bourbon Street. To say there are a lot of things going on in the world right now is to massively understate reality.

Our first day there, we went to Tremé, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city—founded in 1810—and initially the main neighborhood for free people of color. It’s also a David Simon-created TV series from 2010, which, according to the people at the Backstreet Cultural Museum, is pretty faithful to the spirit of the place. The museum itself was actually a house on the corner across from Louis Armstrong park and because New Orleans is nothing if not about the people, this wasn’t an independent wander through a hushed labyrinth of rooms, but an intimate conversation with a guy named Jimmy who explained to our small group the history of the incredibly intricate beaded costumes, often weighing upwards of 100 pounds, displayed along the walls that had been worn during Mardi Gras, jazz funerals, and other social aid/pleasure club moments. He told us how the hand beading takes months and months and months (rivaling any French couture house). The stories of the time and energy each head piece and chest plate carries is astounding. And of course there was music, because that actually is the lifeblood of the city. Jimmy had a drum and he had a song, which had a chorus consisting of “oo-na-na” that we were invited to join in on. (In my eagerness, I went early on the “oo-na-na” and Jimmy shot me a look and a not-yet head shake. sigh. I finally got it together.) The thing about the city is the sound of it. Everywhere. It lifts up into the air and illuminates and celebrates the deep rips this city has endured, then sewed together in a patchwork of pain and hope. This New Yorker article steps right into the heart of it. New Orleanians celebrate life in the face of death on the regular. Almost every weekend there is a second line parade like the one we joined on Sunday, which wound through the Garden District down St. Charles Ave. and into Central City. The first line consisted of three floats honoring the Crescent City Show Stopper’s Social Aid & Pleasure Club, The Brasshopper’s Social Aid & Pleasure Club, and the Sisters of Change Social Aid & Pleasure Club. Then the people followed, the brass band played, we danced as more and more folx joined along the way. It was both exhilarating and adrenaline-rushing in the tender yet tough way people refuse to step away from a crowd, even when a crowd had been completely and tragically undone by terror only days earlier.

After the second line, we went to Preservation Hall for more music. A small art gallery that was opened in the 1950s, the owners began inviting jazz musicians in for jam sessions and the space became a magnet for live shows. Once we stepped inside, I felt my dad everywhere, which meant the music was filled with salty teary streams. Apparently, my dad’s dad had wanted to move to New Orleans after my dad had moved to Cali for college but his mom insisted on relocating to SoCal to be closer to her only son. He was never clear on why gramps wanted to move to The Big Easy but yet I suspect my pa inherited some love of music from him. And I inherited this passion from both my dad and my mom, who loved to sing, although in the last many years she claims to have lost her singing voice. Although my love for music has gone underground, it flowers occasionally. And on that Sunday, a whole branch sprouted and shook. The movement, community, adrenaline passed one to another. I know that’s why I liked going to shows and clubs; why I like bands and the camaraderie. How that bonds me to other humans and naturally how music was a portal between myself and my dad in our den in Pasadena where I first heard him play his records: Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.

How the Eaton fire is affecting the house I grew up in Pasadena, site of the old Bush Gardens, which was subsequently turned into a neighborhood, is yet to be seen. The flames are not many miles from our old place. I think of the den where the jagged-edged jazz riffs came out of the record player, my dad’s knees drumming, feet thwomping on the thick orange shag as he sat in his Eames chair; the waves of cold sadness echoing through my mom’s silence as she worked in the kitchen on the other side of the house, her voice only occasionally singing along to the top-40 radio, making up words to the hits of the day. I bounced in between and took the feelings in. Then the adrenaline of them splitting up and a move somewhere else, though still in Pasadena. What shakes out when everything falls apart? Once the adrenaline of a moment settles down. I can only speak for me, but it’s ongoing, the things that got buried and the new earth turned making way for fresh growth. Boy does it take time and space for it to happen, along with sensitivity and care. All of those things I’m sending toward each&every currently in need of it.

Below some links to help all those who are currently looking for solid ground in SoCal fire areas.

World Central Kitchen food distribution sites

Here is a really good list of places.