It’s starting. Can you feel it?
That jittery flutter in my brain has been making my skull itch for about a week now. It’s carnival season, and I can feel the pull in my very bones. It’s something I’ve taken for granted my entire life — sometimes loving it for the joy of the sensation of community and being with my friends acting like a fool, sometimes loathing it for its intrusion into my life, sometimes avoiding it like the plague for fear of going homicidal on the the mass idiot crowds — but it has always been there.
I miss it. And I never realized how much I would until it was no longer a part of the background noise of my life. I’ve been away from NOLA long enough now for that sensation of something… missing, right around the beginning of the year, to become prominent. The colors are duller around Austin, the air is missing the tinkle of the familiar old carnival classics — the ones we’ve been playing for well over 40 years now, and nobody ever questions why that tired old music from 50’s, 60’s and 70’s is still the signature music of the season… it just is. It’s part of the DNA of the city.
Rifling through my music collection, I was heartbroken to find that none of my Mardi Gras music survived the flood, and I had never converted any to digital. I have been asked no less than four times in the last few weeks if I had any to play… and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t. I just got the faithful old classic, Mardi Gras In New Orleans, and have been listening to it and smiling so broadly, I swear my grin is going to meet in the back, and pop the top of my head clean off. I’m putting out a call for anyone with more of the same to help me bulk up my collection, pleaseandthankyou.
The itch is scratched, but it’s not gone. It’s gonna take being shoulder to shoulder with a rowdy rabble of the unwashed masses, watching the lights, smelling the diesel, screaming my throat raw, and reaching higher to grab the useless — and ultimately worthless except to my starving soul — trinkets that symbolize not just a season, but a part of my life that won’t ever fade.
“Every year, at carnival time, we get a new zoot!”
– The Wild Magnolias
Well, Damn, Bubba. If you’re longing for Mardi Gras, plop your butt in a car, plane, bus or whatevah…and come on down! Not like you’re THAT far away in Vanilla-Texas. I predict that one day of “being shoulder to shoulder with a rowdy rabble of the unwashed masses,” will pretty much cure your longings. Geez, I still miss the old Czechoslovakian real glass beads. The Chinese trash is worth nada….not that Mardi Gras was ever just about the throws. Not a fan of the music, myself.(did “Black Sabbath” ever do a track?) If you’re planning to do any of the NIGHT parades…stay on the main streets…don’t walk the cute, colorful alley-ways..or, bring a gun.
Y’all come on DOWN!
We’re heading on down, alright. And a few days of being in a crowd will likely not diminish my desire to be part of the spectacle… the only thing that has ever done that was having to spend entire Mardi Gras seasons attempting to get around town amidst the nightmare of driving and parking, and the downright hell of dropping off/picking up Lady from Pat O’s smack dab in the middle of ground zero of idiotville — The French Quarter.
I at least get to avoid all of that for the weeks preceding the big day. So, there’s one good thing about living out of town.