Tom Piazza is a fiction and culture writer whose works include My Cold War, Blues And Trouble, Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen, True Adventures With the King of Bluegrass (Jimmy Martin) and countless publications including the Oxford American, the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly. He is a longtime New Orleans resident and was kind enough to take time to elucidate the countless reasons Why New Orleans Matters.Q: You moved from Iowa to New Orleans in 1994, what brought you down to the Big Easy?
A: I was drawn by the music and fell in love with the place. Many people only know the city from Mardi Gras and Bourbon St., but that is a small, exaggerated, commercialized version of New Orleans. There is so much more to experience than having a party, getting naked and returning home to ask for God’s forgiveness.
Q: What it is that makes New Orleans unique from other great American cities?
A: New Orleans is centered around holidays, anniversaries and community events. Everything is highly ritualized. It’s steeped in tradition like not other city with contributions of the Irish, Spanish, French, Caribbean Islanders, Italians and Africans. It’s the birthplace of jazz, the most distinctive and important United States contribution to world culture.
Q: How is the city holding up?
A: New Orleans is a profoundly wounded place. It’s very ambiguous right now. Katrina was a terrible, terrible disaster of unimaginable human proportions. To put on the fairest face, New Orleans faces enormous logistical challenges to get back on its feet. People with the fewest resources are trying to exist in a place without a public school system or proper medical care. It should be made a lot smoother for those who want to return home, but the poor don’t command economic or political clout. Yet, with all the problems, people who live down here continue to come together as a community.
Q: What would you say to someone who wants to visit New Orleans?
A: You can still come down and eat in the best restaurants, hear great music and have the weekend of the year. Beforehand though, I would urge people with a little bit more between the ears to get into the guts of the city and see what’s happened in Lakeview, New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward. After that you can break bread and toast the human spirit in the middle of all this misery and suffering. You will have a rich, textured experience. Then go back and tell everyone what you witnessed. It’s valuable to let the world know what’s happened in New Orleans, and hopefully it’s something we will never see again.
Q: Did you have any problem with holding Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest this year?
A: I respect those who said it was inappropriate to have a celebration after Katrina, but I didn’t agree. It was enormously important for New Orleans to restate its continuity, for everyone to reaffirm life, the joie de vivre. The parades and parties aren’t fatuous or superficial. It’s why there is dancing and music at jazz funerals…and it didn’t hurt the local economy either.
Q: Without being glib, why does New Orleans matter?
A: In a broad sense, if we consider ourselves Americans, it doesn’t matter if a tragedy strikes North Dakota, Austin, Michigan or San Jose. If we are all part of the United States of America, then we all matter equally. When family or neighbors get into trouble, you help them out. How can someone say any American city doesn’t matter? If we aren’t going to invest in safety and build levees that work, not the god awful things constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, then why not say the hell with all of it? Are we going to abandon San Francisco or St. Louis because they’re built on a fault lines? Or New York because it’s a terrorist bulls-eye…
Specific to New Orleans, we can’t reduce the city to a profit/loss statement. If we look at it that way, what’s the bottom line value of Central Park? The most interesting people in America are those attracted to culture, whether they’re musicians, artists or entrepreneurs. We’ve fallen a long way as a society if we don’t reach out to an American city that’s hurting. In fact, we’re doomed.
(August, 2006)
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
