Jambalaya Tour Journal

20 April - "I have mastered the circles!"

By the time I got up at 7:30 a number of people had already departed for New Orleans and those who remained were showering, having breakfast and preparing for the day. Eben took out his clarinet and started to practice the new Cumbia that Doug had brought for us, and he was gradually joined by Gina, Howard, Daniel and David. Gina had brought along a waltz tune, so they tried that as well, filling our morning with music as we went about our tasks. Some folks helped Robin and Erin move their tent as the fire ants had found them even with the pallet and wood platform they were camped on. Joan brought out another one of her great costumes, Snappy the Camera, and put together the outfit to go with it with Joey as fashion consultant. Paul and CiCi did a radio show publicizing our upcoming Bay St. Louis events of parade, workshops and show. We picked up messages from those already in the city with amendments to our directions that would make it a little easier to get through the streets to our destination in the Ninth Ward.

I traveled into New Orleans with Michelle and Tim in Michelle's van madly making journal notes the whole way. We went directly to the St. Mary of the Angels School in the Ninth Ward where the Common Ground volunteers are living. This is one of the neighborhoods that was in the direct path of the waters from Lake Pontchartrain when the levee broke. There was eight feet of water in this district for five days. The residents were scattered to the four winds, when they finally were able to evacuate, and most of them will probably never return. What we saw as we drove through the narrow streets were vast stretches of tightly clustered, broken, empty houses, with a handful of open businesses and a few people gathered on an occasional porch. Even on the main drag the traffic signals aren't working, and there are makeshift stop signs at the intersections that once had lights. The houses still display their spray painted codes from the time of house-to-house search after the storm. There is a date, then markings to indicate what was found by the searchers. All the buildings have the code TFW (toxic flood water). Where there were animals in the homes there are notes to the SPCA about the kind of pet food that was needed and how many and what kind of pets were there, and whether they were inside or outside. There is still rubble everywhere and some of the streets are difficult to negotiate. Regardless of gross structural damage to the homes they are uninhabitable due to the mold that grew as the water receded. One of Common Ground's missions is gutting out houses so that starting over becomes possible.

 

We checked in at the school and found the kitchen crew hard at work in the open air kitchen that extends from the side of the building to the sidewalk, backed up by a refrigerator truck parked next to the school's playground. The school is a large brick building with dormitories set up inside and people camped in the parking lot across the street. There are port-a-potties in the camping area and showers built on the street corner. Their dining hall, once a gymnasium, will be the site of the show tonight. It is a lofty space, with tarps taped to the floors and walls, large tables with chairs scattered about, a beverage station and a few pieces of furniture. There are small rooms with peeling paint and musty odors just off the gym that will act as our green room and dressing rooms. There is no stage, nor lights, nor sound system. The acoustics will turn out to be great for the band, and terrible for everyone else.

 

The plans for everything were in constant flux all afternoon long. The Women's Center show and workshops were canceled at the last minute, so those of us who were suddenly freed up stayed at Common Ground and worked around the site. I joined the kitchen crew. The menu for this evening is: wild mushroom and roasted pepper creamy polenta with basil tomato sauce, roasted thyme yams and carrots, steamed minted lentils, rosemary turtle beans, cucumber and semi-ripe tomato salad, whole roasted garlic, tofu-zucchini fritters, and minted cinnamon apples. Tiberio shopped down at the wholesale market in the French Quarter and, combining what he got there with what he had brought along, he spent a grand total of $57.00, returning the rest of the budget ($443.00) proudly to Joannie. When he first started shopping, the market folks said they would only sell in large amounts, but Tiberio delightedly described bargaining with them to get everything he wanted. There was chopping, stirring, cleaning and mixing in great abundance all afternoon, along with singing and clowning around.

As the afternoon wore on there was debate about when to start the show. Originally planned for 5 to 7 PM, to the accompaniment of dinner served by fancifully attired Chautauquans, there is concern that not enough of the volunteers will be back by five o'clock to create critical mass for the show to start. They apparently trickle back from work locations over the late afternoon to early evening with a busy time at the showers occurring just before dinner. There will be a poetry slam at the Howlin' Wolf Club near the French Quarter later in the evening, and we will also want to finish the show before people expect to leave for that event. We decided to wait until it seemed right to start and then start when that moment arrived.

 

The other theme for the day (besides change) was people split asunder from their stuff. All day long people and their things wound up in different places as vehicles came and went. For a while Robin didn't have her flute, I didn't have any of my stuff, Andrea didn't have clean clothes to change into when she got back from mucking out houses, and Karl had to wait for a van to return - from going to retrieve my stuff from another van that had taken Gabe to a clinic to get a tetanus shot after he stepped on a nail - which made him late to get Ray from dialysis. Eventually all the vehicles returned, reuniting stuff and folk. Andrea got to take her shower and we all had our instruments back.

At the late edge of the afternoon, incongruous in the ruined streets, an ice cream truck pulled up alongside the school and a line quickly formed for cool delights in the steamy heat.

We dressed and prepared at the edges of the vast space. The tables and chairs had been arranged earlier to create a theater in a 3/4 round kind of space with the hopes of keeping the audience close enough to the performers to be able to hear as well as see the show. The band pit made up the other quarter of the circle.

 

Lorraine, Erin, Robin, Tasche, Andrine, Ben Thomas, Ruby, Petra, Candace, and Tiberio set up their food serving area and started dishing the glorious feast to the first arrivals. Eventually Eben sat down in the band area, put his clarinet together, and started to play "Dio Nunca Muero." As always, one band member attracted another, and so he was joined by Howard, then David, then all the rest of us one by one. We started playing through our tunes, deciding each one when the last was finished, and even sight read the Billboard March when Eben suddenly decided to pull the music out of the band box. The dining room started to fill, and then it suddenly became time to start the show. The band stood up, and for the first time that I can remember, didn't parade in, but just started with The Chumleighland March. The magic song filled the hall and the audience was soon grooving along with Thaddeus's joyful, irresistible tune.

 

The show order worked so well tonight that it became the model for the rest of the shows. As always, Faith led the way. It was an incredible challenge for her to be heard in the huge space, so Ray somehow conjured up a bullhorn and held it up for her as she sang. Tim pulled out his cigar boxes, and Joey got some volunteers involved with his tricks. Harry's FEMA song tickled in all the right places and Noodlini fractured both Italian and juggling to humorous advantage. Jan belted out an acapella song that reached the farthest corners of the room and then Jan, Gina and CiCi sang Accentuate the Positive, and Gina went to sea with a shark. Trash Fashion rose up next and put its usual high gloss on garbage. There was no ceiling height problem for Nanda in this space. Kevin made poetry magic as usual, and CiCi and Carl made the Ninth Ward their home on the range.

Oliver, Rod and Mark then did a bit that Oliver had concocted addressing a rumor around Common Ground that the canned water they have been drinking has been making some people sick. They performed a mock commercial for the canned water product, turning concern into comedy for this moment. At end of the bit a shaving cream pie appeared, destined for Mark whose birthday is today. It all happened so fast that many people didn't even see the birthday salute. As the show was proceeding Chautauquans were clearing dishes and cleaning up, taking care of the volunteers from the beginning to the end of the meal.

 

Then it was time for Artis to take the floor. His powerful raw articulations struck an enormous chord in the audience, and they gave him two standing ovations, one for each section of his act. He then started to pull on a Tyvek suit and was joined by the rest of the crew that had gone to muck out houses today (Andrea, Luke, Rod, Oliver and Ben Neville). They had re-donned their protective suits, respirators and goggles and trundled on stage with their work tools (wheelbarrows, shovels, buckets, rakes and other implements of destruction and removal) and performed an improvisational percussion number as they had done spontaneously earlier that day while working clearing a house.

 

 

 

 

 

Magical Mystical Michael was next, and like Joey, he looked for a volunteer. In fact, his choice was the same as Joey's, and although the gentleman was nice he was done being tortured by magicians for the evening and declined to come up. As he was declining, a lean young man with a head scarf and half gloves on was agitating across the room with his hand in the air, wanted to be picked as badly as any elementary schooler with the right answer. Michael gave in to his enthusiasm, although we could see he was concerned about what might be coming. The volunteer's name was Blade, and he said that he had always wanted to do the trick with the rings.

The bit Michael does with this is to make the volunteer do the act along with him, setting it up so the volunteer does the first trick, but not the others. When Blade did as Michael directed and dropped the rings to reveal they were magically connected, he raised the rings high and shouted, "I have mastered the circles!" He was completely thrilled. He was in turn a little disappointed that the rest of it was not real for him, but gave us one of the great moments of the show. Michael was afraid he was going to bend the rings from sheer enthusiasm.

 

The Karamazovs closed the show with the piece about a young man being helped by musical juggling angels, and then did some jazz juggling. The light had started to go and was rapidly disappearing as they tried to juggle. Someone triumphantly turned on some room lights, but they were a tiny string of bulbs high up across the room, and no useful lumens were acquired with their presence.

The band launched into "Down by the Riverside" and the crowd started to dance. They showed no interest in stopping, so when we finished Riverside, Oliver shouted "Take it to the street!" The band started playing "Second Line" and moved toward the front door, then played our way out of the building and down the stairs into the long sunset light. When we reached the street we turned around to see the audience spilling out of the building and down the stairs, dancing with their arms in the air. It was a technicolor moment. We finished "Second Line," and still they wanted more, dancing with abandon. What else to play but the one about the Saints marching in, and so we did. We marched through the streets and around the corner and into the back entrance of the school, followed by our ecstatic audience. Once back inside, we finally reached the end of the show when we finished playing "Ob La Di, Ob La Da."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiberio had dinner saved for us in the kitchen when the show was actually over. While we were eating, many people thanked us in the way we were becoming accustomed to hearing, with deepest gratitude for some joyful uplift. One of the volunteers asked us to remember and spread the word that one thing they really needed was roll screening, so they could hang some screens around the kitchen to keep out the flies. We could hardly talk after the show, being more in a state of deep feeling from the experience of the audience. We agreed it was the best show we had ever done, because what we had to give met the audience's need so exactly. No stage, no sound system, no lights, just a perfect connection between gift and need.

We did have to figure out about what was to come tonight and tomorrow, as part of the group had decided to stay in New Orleans overnight and not return to Bay St. Louis. Our gig tomorrow is with Emergency Communities, a group working out of St. Bernard Parish, which is not very far from the Ninth Ward.

My ride was ready to go very early on in the process, so I got what information I needed to have to keep people in camp informed about what to do tomorrow, and we headed back to Mississippi. A number of people stayed in town for a while and went to the French Quarter for beignets, coffee, drinks and music to celebrate Mark's birthday.

Camp was quiet with just a few of us there until 1 AM when the rest of the returnees came in. We went to bed still taking in the exhilaration and depth of our day's experiences.

 

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