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.
And it's stories like these that get to the core of what this place is all about. See, most of what he told us is probably bullshit. In fact, there is no "probably" about it - it was certainly bullshit. But he wasn't giving us vital guidance. We didn't need the information in order to survive. It didn't matter if what he said was true or right.
He was just a dude, in a white shirt and a black vest, telling a story to another dude wearing a white shirt and a grey scarf. A story, that in that moment, made things better. He clarified confusion. He satisfied curiosity. He took a single moment of interaction and made it worth more than just the swapping of liquor for cash.
And that is what New Orleans is - a constant celebration of just the moment. Of The Now. This is why the future is never planned for and why the potholes just grow bigger and the water rises higher and higher.
---
Up in City Park, a paved bike-path snakes alongside the edges of a bayou. Across the road is a golf course and across the water is an exclusive neighborhood. Some days, laying out on the patch of sun-worn grass running between the path and the road, are scattered trucks belonging to the men fishing into the bayou.
But, the path itself, is mostly unused. I don't have to listen out for objects approaching from the other direction. And I can play my music loud through my earphones.
Whenever the version of 'One Too Many Mornings' that Dylan played with The Rolling Thunder Revue comes on, it always gets nudged up a little louder still.
And it don't mean no one no good;
When everything that I'm saying;
You can say it just as good."
I like to lean my bike up against a sturdy tree planted by the water's edge and stare out at the extravagant houses on the opposite bank. I have so much that I wished I had said at the time. Not because it would've changed anything. No, nothing could've changed your hair or your accent or the way you liked to cook steak.
Just because I want to know, for certain, if I really could say it just as good as you.
---
Most days, I take the long way home. Down along the train tracks and through the parking lot behind Washington Park. I try to imagine what it must feel like for you to live with your constant fear of abandonment. A heavy and puffy charcoal bubble, stuck firmly into the space between your shoulder-blades. Maybe the extra steps and a bit more time on Spotify will help me find that empathy.
I turn right, cross Decatur and amble through the bluestone cobbled mall beside Jackson Square. Maybe a change of song will help. But I never heard you speak your fear, so any song I pick would only be, at best, a guess at what your voice actually sounds like.
I used to be able to head down on a Monday night and pack into a tiny bar-room on Claiborne - just before the bend - and see Kermit Ruffins make joy really swing. His daughter runs the door and once she recognises you as a local, she lets you in for free. Only the tourists pay to get into Kermit's bar.
Further back in time, back in Melbourne, I would circle the Windsor end of Chapel St. watching the restaurants fill up for dinner service, whilst blasting live recordings of Kermit through my earphones.
Those were a different pair of earphones to the ones I now have on, as I start my way back up Royal and through The Quarter. I still have that old pair somewhere in a drawer in my kitchen. Just in case they never let Kermit open back up or if I feel like I am able - or wanting - to go back to The Before.
Kermit always sounds like hope and satisfaction to me. Hope for a bit more, mixed with a patient satisfaction with the moment. And neither of those are gonna help me understand the weight of your desperate premonitions.
I punch in 'Shovels & Rope' into the search bar.
On' The Devil Is All Around', Cary Ann sings the line:
It'll be hard won;
It'll be our one;
And maybe that's what your days - and your quiet moments at night, alone in bed, endlessly scrolling through your phone - must feel like.
You know?
As if you're looking for some pre-determined lover to come along. A specific one. One that counts in the eyes of others. One that isn't any of the ones that have come before. And then, if that one manages to never leave you, then you'll definitely loosen the death-grip you have on that charcoal fear.
And it will float away. It'll just leave you.
This is why, all the ones that came before and stayed - and forgave you - don't count. Because they weren't "our one".
And, anyways, those ones did end up leaving you too. I mean, it was only after you left first, but still - if you look at it one way and not the other - they did eventually abandon you.
I put my key into my door and push my way into my apartment. I need to turn the air conditioning down and charge my earphones.
Maybe I really can say it just as good. But only in the moment.
