Planet of New Orleans

The people who live in New Orleans are curious specimens.  They don't recognize tragedy.  They celebrate joy.  They look forward to the next season and all the bounty it will bring.  New Orleans is curious.  It is funny.  It is not humorous, just odd, a little off kilter, a little out of bounds if you recognize boundaries.  Puzzle as much as you like.  Philosophize.  Consult your Tarot and textbooks.  You won't find New Orleans defined in any treatise.  It is a world of its own, a parcel of planet that hews to its own heliocentric conception.  The sun rises in New Orleans every day.  It shines.  The city is showered and impregnated with 14 karat gold.

Eat your fill and feast your eyes and spirit.

Confabulation

The art of confabulation is a tricky thing.  It is the discipline of inventing memories based on reliable fact.  In New London, Conn. and in New Orleans, Louisiana, it isn't difficult to make more of things than they seem on the surface.  It is often hard to keep everything straight.  Life in both places is like a fever dream.

Life is more than what you make it.  It is what you remember after you live to tell the tale.  It takes independent study, a lot of time in the library, a lot of time on the street, many bleary-eyed sleepless hours meditating while stumbling through a city and taking whatever comes your way to craft flights of fancy informed by hard knocks.

Have I mentioned before that it is good to be Whalehead King?  Have I mentioned before that it is good to live in New Orleans?  I would like to reiterate both facts and hammer them home, like tacks mounting a butterfly.

I don't find I need to fill in too many details or conflate the absurd.  If life is a conundrum to be recollected fresh, it is also a dish best served chilled after introspection and after a point of remove.  I was stumbled into a second line parade under the Claiborne Avenue overpass today.  The Rebirth Brass Band was blowing loud.  Later, in the dead of night while I was snug in my bed, three teenagers marched up my street apropos of nothing blowing a trombone, a trumpet, and the third was shaking a tamborine.  What was the occasion?  We were all in New Orleans on an early February night and the weather was balmy, just like the city.  I heard their approach and sat on my front porch.  As they passed, I blew a kazoo to accompany them though I didn't join the march.

Happy Carnival!
WK

New Orleans' flag

That's a nice flag.  It represents Indianapolis, Indiana, the state capitol.  The design means something.  Indianapolis was laid out so that the governor's mansion would sit in the middle of a circle where the two main streets intersected.  If you look at a road map of Indiana today, you will see that the layout of the state resembles the flag of its capitol city.  Wheels within wheels around a hub in the center.

Shall we look at New Orleans' flag?

Why three fleurs-de-lis?  To represent the sovereignty of France Spain and the US?  Why three fleurs-de-lis then?  That's the symbol of the French monarchy, not Spain or the federal government that has had jurisdiction over this former French colony for nigh 200 years.   What's with the narrow red and blue stripes?  I suppose the blue on the bottom can represent the mighty Mississippi River but why the red.  Why the white field sullied by three fleurs-de-lis?

Red, white and blue are good flag colors as any American citizen will tell you.  The French would reply that they are more properly listed as blue, white and red.  I find so much white on a flag a distraction.

When I was in the military I was stationed in Italy.  The Italians found it amusing how much reverence we showed the flag, running it up the pole at dawn and lowering it slowly and folding it with care at sunset.  "We use our flag as a tablecloth," the Italians told me.  There are worse uses for the Italian flag, I suppose.

There is no denying that the fleur-de-lis is a symbol of New Orleans.  I don't know about having three of them on the mast in front of city hall and every municipal building.  In a city with so many artists and that is currently driven to remaking itself, my impression is that the flag needs a makeover.  It will be a contentious subject of debate between traditionalists and modernists, old school and new branders, natives and transplants.  The city itself doesn't even use the flag's fleur-de-lis as its symbol.  The city's fleur-de-lis is a more baroque and whimsical-looking thing.

One fleur-de-lis on a flag is enough.  A better design would be better.  No black and gold please.  New Orleans is more than a football team though it is a city full of saints.