Cowboys and Mardi Gras Indians

Cowboys and Mardi Gras Indians
My attempts at being a cowboy were not good... No gun and holster set, no bandanna, no hat....nothing would ever make a little chubby boy with Coke bottle glasses look like Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers or Hop Along Cassidy.
Mirrors don't lie, and I was terribly disappointed about what I saw in mine....disappointed and frustrated about my failure to come up with an image for myself that fit. But it did push me to look inwards and search for something I could do well.
I have always loved running my hands over something to feel its lines...its form. There's pleasure to be had as a surface undulates under a light touch.
Steel, clay, wood, flesh, glass, stone.... A form, no matter what the material, can be seamless, endless...go on and on...
At some point I wanted to imprint myself on to something that would give that kind of pleasure. First I wanted to experience my hands on something I had done...and to feel the swelling pride of achievement...and then I dreamed of sharing my work with others, bathing in their admiration.
Eyes can be hands, floating pleasurably over a surface... Thoughts can be like that too....the stuff we gently stroke and caress as we dream and recreate ourselves in a desire to be more...to be happier.
Ears, in a very cerebral sense, can slide over rhythm and sound and transport us...
I wanted that, all of it. As a boy, I worked very hard to project myself into another place, another time, where I could be more...more to myself and more to others....
I have always been a dreamer....
I wanted to produce something that would grab at the senses...something that would announce my worth. Frustration consumed me as I tried to come up with a means of presenting my magic, my wonder, my soul to a world that seemed unappreciative, unresponsive....a world unaware of what I was and what I was about.
One summer morning I decided to see how many people noticed me... after I had already decided that nobody really did. I put a huge red sticker in the middle of my forehead and then waited for someone to say something, anything. Nobody said a word, and that made me really pissy...in such a foul mood that by supper, I had gotten a whipping for being sulky.
What does a half blind, short, chubby kid do?
God knows, there had to be some way for me to let the world know about the richness I could feel flowing through me! Where could I aim the gush in me that wanted out.... quickly and violently.
I wanted to be valued....noticed....heard....
Everyone wants to be heard.... right?
My quest took me all over New Orleans...the parks, up and down the avenues that bisected Magazine and St. Charles, the Central Business District and Canal St., through the French Quarter and its shops and galleries, office buildings and libraries, onto the campuses of Loyola and Tulane, into churches and museums.....even hospitals. Where did I fit?
In New Orleans, music seems to transcend the physical, the economic... all that limited me.
The people I most admired, loved, valued...they were connected to music in some way...even the singing cowboys. Music energized me in a way that nothing else did.
Music had the ability to give me chills... or to zap me with a bolt of something this little white boy couldn't explain. In New Orleans, music is both....so beautiful and true...so physical and full of funk.
I wanted some of that!
The people of New Orleans have always treated kids like me with understanding and generosity. They see to it that music is something everybody can have a taste of...a swinging jam that anyone and everyone can sit in on.
There are enough churches, Mardi Gras parades, clubs...endless venues for kids to be bad until they get good. And there's always a sympathetic audience that will boogie to anything with a beat.... I got some of that love and encouragement.
My city loved me and was willing to pay me some attention...even if I was a flop as a cowboy.