Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 116

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the metaphoric navel of my psychological universe was Jackson
Square, French Quarter, New Orleans, whose hometown blues and
jazz and funky r & b functioned as my holy music, through which I
harmonized with the universe. But 1 still assumed that was all just
part of a sophisticated secular person's "making do" with Eliadean
echoes of the archaic in the modem profane world.
Eight years later, however, came the trip home to bury my
mother, in the very midst of the time when every important aspect of
my personal life was hitting rock bottom. Just six months after that
burial, 1 (who had so very rarely visited before) was back in New
Orleans again, though not much with my family. I was just being
there, just be-ing . . . uptown and downtown, breathing the familiarly
fragrant heavy air, letting the native foods of neighborhood places
nourish me while I bathed in the sounds of the music, played where it
was bom. From salt-water breezes off Lake Ponchartrain to the moist
smell of old oak, moss, and homes on Carrollton near Riverbend; from
the Garden District’s floweiy freshness to the (Quarter's more acidic
sidewalk smells . . . . From po-boys on the porch at Sid-Mar's in
Bucktown to the Camellia Grill's pecan pie; from College Inn's
crawfish etouffe to good breakfast eggs and grits at the Hummingbird
Grill; from Buster Holmes's red beans and rice to the Acme's raw
oysters . . . . From live brass bands in Jackson Square (competing with
steamboat's calliope) to old jukeboxes playing tmly old records in
countless nearby coffeeshops and taverns; from accidentally
discovering Rockin Dopsie and his zydeco band playing at noon in
Lafayette Park (with very old and very young all dancing, Cajun or
improvised style) to seeking out Charmaine with Reggie, Amasa and
friends in the evening over at Snug Harbor; from the post-retirement
legends playing young at Preservation Hall, to the current masters
jamming (much later!—till dawn) at Benny's, to the unknown
youngsters singing old (at all hours) over by Lucky's___
Though not really reflective about it at the time, I was
instinctively sure of what I was doing, and I did sense it was about
healing. Hurting more ways than I could simultaneously feel, having
lost everything but my job, I needed no new stimuli. I did need, and
somehow knew it, my home place. Then, promptly upon my return to
New Jersey!, I stubbornly interpreted the whole experience as mere
midlife crisis, relieved by middle-aged indulgence in nostalgia and a
visit back home, all tastefully brought back up to Montclair by my