French Fried

On the corner, at the edge of the French Quarter, small groups gather round with masks pulled under jaws, talking in hushed tones. On the wide strip of worn grass running up the middle of the road, stand even more groups. Bigger groups. All awaiting their turn to fall down on the heavy, blonde caramel, picnic-style tables that were dumped onto the sidewalk a few weeks back.

Burgers. And sugary cocktails in oversize black and white plastic cups. And no fries. No fries available. Instead, potatoes roasted in foil till they dry and crumble into an off-white-like powder.

This is what they stand out in the street for.

With the forlorn impatience of a puppy staring out the window, as the rain falls down on his morning walk time.

Some days, I'll head out for a Music, Sweat and Reflection Session by the river and when I get back - an hour or two later - the very same folks are still waiting. They still haven't been sat. They still haven't been fed. They still haven't been able to get what they came out here for.

Notes From The South: No. 2

At the end of my first week in New Orleans, my new confidant took me to a bar at one of the ritzier hotels down on the edges of The Quarter. The bartender recognised her from a private show they had both been to the week before, at a jazz musician's sprawling music-studio. As they chatted back and forth, the bartender's drawl and accent started to remind me of the outer boroughs of New York City.

After he mixed our drinks and brought them on over to us, I asked him if he was from the East Coast.

"Nope. Born and raised here. Lived here my whole life."

"Oh. Interesting. Because you seem to talk with a New York accent."

He then launched into a story about how in the 50's and 60's there was a shortage of folks available to fill vacant school-teacher positions in Orleans Parish. The state came up with a raft of incentives in order to motivate teachers from the Tri-State area to move on down here. This meant, that several generations of local children ended up being taught how to read, write - and, yes - speak by folks from New York. The end result being that, today, large swathes of locals talk in a particular blended brew of Louisianan drawl mixed with a Long Island lilt.

After he finished his story - and without waiting for a response or a reaction - the bartender turned to the next customer and carried on with his work.

Subterranean Home-Stuck Blues

Sienna and I met on Bumble. We traded a handful of messages about dogs and divorce and delivery. And then we swapped phone numbers.

When we met up in person, it was underground in a long, thin rectangle of a basement bar. One clean length of the room was entirely covered with antique Singer sowing machines. They were mounted and drilled into the wall in a grid-like pattern. If I had to guess - and I couldn't imagine why I'd ever have to do such a thing - I would say there was seventy eight of them on that wall.

They sold burgers and beers and played loud house music. None of this seem to bear are real connection to the dense and heavy collection of rusted tools of garment creation that dominated the room. But that was ok, cause Sienna told stories and ate fast and talked about remorse and responsibility.

Sunshine and Patience

She was smoking when I met her:

I was smoking when she left;

Maybe it's got something to do with cigarettes.

Tex Perkins, 'Fine Mess'

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Carly lived behind a thick, white door leading into a tiny, irregular-shaped lobby.

Inside the lobby the carpet was charcoal grey, the walls a white-washed pastel green and the two elevators - one on each side - a shiny silver. The elevator on the left lifted up to the apartment on the middle level and the one on the right took you up to the apartment on the top floor. Beyond them and facing out diagonally in the back left corner, stood an a emerald green door that opened up into her ground-floor apartment.

She moved out to London from Los Angeles in the early aughts. Back in the 70's, her father had trekked the other way in an effort to escape a business venture gone wrong. By the end of his second week in town, he had met her mother and by the end of the second month, he had managed to get her pregnant. They settled into a mediocre marriage of compromise and hope, which they then spiced up with deceit and ignorance.