Amid the devastation, you have to look for hope. Forward progress of any kind.
Even the smallest incidents of routine and normalcy become reassuring. For instance, I was driving down Prytania, and at the corner of Felicity, the light turned red.
Out of nowhere, in total desolation, there was a working stoplight. I would have been less surprised to find a Blockbuster Video on Mars.
And the funny thing is, I stopped. I waited for it to turn green, and then I drove slowly on my way, even though there were no other cars anywhere and the likelihood of getting a ticket for running the only traffic signal in town seems very unlikely right now.
Considering.
Also on Prytania, there was a gardener watering the plants on the porch of Nicolas Cage’s mansion, and I guess that’s a good sign. Life goes on. In very small ways.
The toilets flush now, and I never thought that would be a sound of reassurance. Even better was finding out that WWOZ is broadcasting on the Web—radio in exile—laying out its great New Orleans music.
That’s important. I have no idea from where they’re operating or which disc jockeys are spinning the discs, but I can tell you this: The first time I hear Billy Dell’s Records from the Crypt on the radio again, I will kiss the dirty ground beneath my feet.
On Friday, you started to see guys with brooms cleaning Canal Street and Convention Center Boulevard. Up until then, any tidying up required a backhoe, a crane, or a Bobcat.
God only knows where they’re going to put all this garbage, all this rubble, all these trees, but they’re gathering it up all the same.
The streets of the French Quarter, absent the rubble of the CBD, basically look and smell the same as they do the day after Mardi Gras, except with no broken strands of beads in the gutter.
Okay, maybe it was a real windy Mardi Gras, but you get the point.
It just needs a little face-lift, a little sweeping up, and a good hard rain to wash away . . . all the bad stuff.
A counterpoint to that scene would be Uptown on Broadway—Fraternity Row—where the street is actually cleaner than usual, and that’s because the fine young men and women of our universities had not yet settled into their early-semester routines of dragging living room furniture out onto their front yards and drinking Red Bull and vodka to while away their youth.
I wonder where all of them are. When this is over, who will go there and who will teach there?
What will happen to us?
One thing’s for sure, our story is being told.
The satellite trucks stretch for eight blocks on Canal Street and call to mind an event like the Super Bowl or the Republican National Convention.
It’s a strange place. Then again, anywhere that more than ten news reporters gather becomes a strange place by default.
I saw Anderson Cooper interviewing Dr. Phil. And while Cooper’s CNN camera crew filmed Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil’s camera crew filmed Cooper, and about five or six other camera crews from other shows and networks stood to the side and filmed all of that.
By reporting this scene, I have become the media covering the media covering the media.
It all has the surrealistic air of a Big Event, what with Koppel and Geraldo and all those guys wandering around in their Eddie Bauer hunting vests, and impossibly tall and thin anchorwomen from around the region powdering their faces and teasing their hair so they look good when they file their latest report from Hell.
“And today in New Orleans . . . blah blah blah.”
Today in New Orleans, a traffic light worked. Someone watered flowers. And anyone with the means to get online could have heard Dr. John’s voice wafting in the dry wind, a sound of grace, comfort, and familiarity here in the saddest, loneliest place in the world.
It’s a start.