In some ways, I hate to write about New Orleans. I mean, yes, it’s a beautiful city with its own unique vibe, and I love it. It’s just that, when you start discussing New Orleans, and you’re writing for people who don’t live here, you invariably end up perpetuating the city’s stereotypes: vampires, Mardi Gras, shabby gentility, pervasive decadence. Sure, there’s a shred of truth to each of those, but to tout them as gospel…well, that requires some serious fabrication.
There is, however, one cliche of the city that I can’t begin to deny: the idea of New Orleans as an underdeveloped city-state, a piece of the Third World plucked from thousands of miles away and set down at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Last night, for example, I was walking the dogs, and I heard a hum–a loud, electric hum, like fifty households going simultaneously dark. It’s a distinctive sound, one I barely knew before I moved here. Over the past decade or so, I’ve become accustomed to it, and last night my involuntary response was to look up, off to the horizon in the direction of the noise, and as expected, I saw the blue-green glow of a second transformer shorting out. Five or ten seconds later, its own hum sounded.
There was no storm last night. It wasn’t particularly hot. Unless a cat with a deathwish found its way into a substation (which has happened before), I can’t imagine why the power might have gone out. But honestly, I didn’t even ponder the question. Like so many people in so many places around the world with spotty utilities and corrupt politicians, I’ve learned to just accept things as they happen and to be happy when they return to normal.
Sometimes it bothers Jonno, the way things are here. And I see his point: you can’t depend on much in New Orleans. Sometimes even the bars close during high-category hurricanes. It is not a city for the impatient.
Okay, I admit it: I’m officially a bore. The only revelations I have these days come when I’m walking the dogs.
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