Busy. That explains the lack of posts. But this was always first and foremost a personal archive of things to remember.

Here’s another thing to remember. Matt Perrine of Bonerama:

Sometimes when I play New Orleans music in New Orleans, and the spirit in the room has taken our individual flames and created a spiritual bonfire, the room we are all in becomes not one room, but many where that New Orleans spiritual bonfire has been lit, through time and circumstance. As if, with a blink, 2008 could become 1935, or any other time. When I play a second line, it feels as if every New Orleans brass band, from all time, is part of the same parade, and my steps are only the latest lap. Or when playing a show in this club, I am playing another set in a never-ending gig, throughout time and space, linking me to all New Orleans players who played before me. I have lived in New Orleans for 17 years, and I feel more kinship to it’s ancestors than I do to my own blood. I have found my family here.

History. Place. Belonging. It oozes out of the cracks in the red Louisiana mud bricks outlining the foundation of a massive antebellum building on Esplanade Avenue which burned down during or after Katrina. It oozes out of the plaza in Armstrong Park, where African descendants met to sing and dance, creating a crucible of one of the most American of institutions: Jazz. It oozes out of the Spanish and French balconies of the French Quarter, where I witnessed an event which happens in only one city on the planet: a celebration of the coming Lenten season with a dog parade, Barkus!