In 1946, when he was roughly twenty-two years old, Truman Capote published an essay about his home town–New Orleans. In that beautiful piece of writing, the author observed: “New Orleans streets have long, lonesome perspectives; in empty hours their atmosphere is like Chirico, and things innocent, ordinarily…acquire qualities of violence.” So saying, Capote was, of course, describing the imagination, and how it can get to work in a place like New Orleans, which is empty and haunted and struggling and alive, all at once. He was not wrong about the “long, lonely perspectives,” that can haunt you as you move from Treme to the Quarter to Canal Street, then Uptown. The heat seals New Orleans off from the rest of the world while citizens wouldn’t have it any other way: who would want to be like the rest of the world? Palm trees and cement, wide avenues, balconies made up in the old colonial style, and then, over in Treme, row houses built on high foundations, with slats built into doors, so air circulates through shotgun houses, but actually you’re not living on air in New Orleans anyway but liquid that sits on top of air, squishing it with a laugh. And at night the insect world that feeds on liquid feeds on New Orleans; the city is alive with the sound of insects, Northern girls scream and Southern Girls giggle as the sound of their skirts swishing in the dead of night mingles with beetles singing and the sound of a cigarette being lit. What can happen to your body in that night? Near Congo Square the air is as black as your worst thoughts; a gas station is a figment of your imagination, your dreams, your nightmares. Fill ‘er up! But where’s the attendant? Where’s the rest of the world? A shirtless Creole-looking boy crosses N. Rampart Street and disappears, and then you disappear, too, down Royal into what? A street scene near the Hotel Monteleone, and on corner where there’s a drug store with the old neon sign: an impromptu street scene, a woman dancing near a trombone: New Orleans as a living cliche that lives. Sometimes, afraid of the night or what I might look like in it, let alone what might happen to me in it, or sometimes, late in the afternoon, when I can no longer swim in the swimming, steaming, air, I go to the Napoleon House, a bar and restaurant in the French Quarter, I always forget it until I see it again, over on Chartres Street (pronounced Chart-ers Street; don’t make the mistake of pronouncing anything French-like, no one will understand you). Napoleon House sags and stands erect in its middle, the walls a victim of that Louisiana air, an element that makes a play thing of paint and plaster, and finds doors obscene. In that place of wooden tables, palms, and white table clothes, air circulates with the help of fans, and the bartender conducts his own personal business as you decide whether or not your body can afford more delusions over ice, or another sandwich made of peppers. Excess is this city’s middle name. Have you ever felt like you had an excess of time? New Orleans days are stretched to their limit, and then night appears as suddenly as it was forgotten, and then it starts again: the lonely perspective, the violence, a political disaster where no one passes you without a lovely “Good morning.” Or slow and comprehending, “Good night.”
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You have only to open the Library of America’s sterling edition of Gertrude Stein’s “Writings, 1903-1932,” to find what you are looking for in terms of inspiration. She changed everything, and she can change your mind with a glance of her pen. To wit: Bored and disgusted with the natural hysteria that informs the American theatre or most of it? Turn to page 397 and read Stein’s version of a play: “Turkey and Bones and Eating and We Liked It,” in which a character named Felix and a letter. says: “I do not wish to reply to a telegram, not because I find it difficult to explain in it that I wished to see you. I did wish to see you.” No one has topped this in terms of emotional truth, or the American penchant to express sincerity–theatrically. As I was reading “Turkey” (has it ever been produced? I would love to record it), Miss Stein appeared on my I-Shuffle reading her portrait of the painter of Pablo Picasso. In that moment I knew Gertrude came to see me, and push me up the hill toward greater or realer self-expression, while leaning on metaphors.
