Uneasy in the Big Easy

The weekend before last my wife and I visited New Orleans. We had a great time, and I recommend it as a weekend tourist destination. Few US cities offer anything truly distinctive, and New Orleans certainly has a vibe, as well as being a very practical place to visit for adults. I came hope happy, but then also somewhat disturbed by the experience.

We largely stayed within tourist New Orleans, an area of twelve blocks square and a few blocks surrounding it easy to navigate on foot. We did visit the city park, with its sculpture and botanical gardens and museums, but that was not far away and still felt largely white and affluent. We should perhaps have explored further, because for sure what we saw was largely what the big money running the city wanted us to see.

The history is quaint and well packaged, but hardly special to a European. But there are two clear wins for the city, its food and its jazz. We sampled jambalaya, crawfish pie and filé gumbo, as well as beignets and po boys, and enjoyed them all. The food reminded me of Portuguese fare, tasty simple recipes originally mass-produced on farms. But in Portugal it is just there, not packaged up as something special. In New Orleans I got the feeling some families are making a lot of money from peddling essentially cheap fare. Still, it was good, and Trip Advisor helps nowadays to make sure we made sound choices.

Even better is the jazz. It is everywhere, in cafés, on the streets, in bars and in fancier clubs, and the informality of the music is what made the place special for me. New Orleans jazz is relentlessly cheerful and easy to listen to. I have never really appreciated true jazz, with its ten minute solos beloved of aficionados but dull to the rest of us. In New Orleans they keep it simple and accessible.

That is not to deny the talent and variety on show. We saw groups with almost every conceivable combination of instruments and plenty of variety of style. But generally there was a foot-tapping beat and a catchy melody with enough repetition to make listening easy. Like Bach, the beat is very consistent, and a cadence rare but well-signalled, but then immediately followed by one instrument leading off the next theme.

Those were the good bits. So why did I come home feeling uneasy? Well, it was something about humans abusing themselves.

New Orleans almost felt like a freak show of human self-abuse. People are drunk on the streets from morning until night. Others spend their days stuffing sugar down their gullets. Marijuana odours linger everywhere and harder drugs are not far below the surface. Sex is bought and sold with few limits. Casinos abound for those looking to gamble away their assets. Superstition is marketed as part of the appeal of the city, and palm and card readers do a brink trade. People still pay to see dwarves and freaks. On the plus side, at least people of non-traditional sexuality could find an escape from judging eyes.

At one level, none of this does much immediate harm. A good party offers a release of tension and binding human companionship. At the weekend, the place was full of hen parties and stag parties and wedding groups, all having plenty of fun. The jazz felt far better for being in a relaxed atmosphere lubricated with a glass or two of wine.

The problem is that the longer-term results are clearly visible too. You could almost see a sad life cycle among the people in the French quarter. In their twenties, many come to revel with friends for a raucous weekend. By their thirties, this might become more of a habit or even an addiction, many now living there full-time and eking out a living day to day. In their forties, the same people have lost their talent and allure, but have nowhere else to go and the abuse has taken a gross toll on their bodies. In their fifties, some are begging in the streets or even populating the city’s many cemeteries.

It is all just so obvious, no doubt despite efforts by the big money interests trying to hide it. Bourbon Street feels like something out of Dickens, full of filth, vomit, vermin and people who would be ashamed of their behaviour were they not so wasted. The obesity among the pampered classes stuffing themselves with beignets and cocktails was disgusting to me.

Then there is the tawdry commercial side. The French quarter seemed to be its own little economy, with invisible king pins. Most people are working for minimal wages and relying on tips. There seemed to be some racial hierarchy at work here: most of those in jobs where tips would be plentiful, like tour guides and waiters in upscale bars, seemed to be white, while those behind the scenes like kitchen staff and chamber maids were black. I was just a bit suspicious of the whole set up.

I didn’t let any of this annoy me while I was there, I just enjoyed the jazz and food and the chance to spend quality time with my wife. But on the way home we had a red eye flight and happened to be seated in the back row, from where I could witness the eerie quiet of people sleeping off their excesses – barely a screen flickered. And I wondered what New Orleans tells us about humanity. It is not even just an American or a Southern thing. Ibiza, or Macau, or even Manchester and New York have their excesses too, maybe just without the chronic obesity.

The contrast that came to me was from my weeks singing in Princeton each summer with its crowd of twenty-somethings. Those weeks always lift me up and make me feel good about human progress. The weekend in New Orleans lifted me up too, but then rather let me down again, much like the indulgences the place relies on.

So really my unease is about humanity and how we have developed in our ability to find fulfilment without causing abuse to ourselves and those who depend on us. We have made such progress in so many areas, but it seems that staring at screens, idling in malls and getting wasted is the best that most of us can muster for fun. This at a time when work is more stressful than ever and where family ties have loosened, so the need for some other form of relief has increased.

I don’t want to be a nanny or a judgemental puritan. I have abused my own body and harmed others with my behaviour too, not just when I was young. I have nothing against a bit of a bender – those hen parties and stag parties had earned their weekend of excess. But I have seen at first hand the damage alcohol and other addictions can do to lives, and am I just wondering whether we ought to have something better by now.

Even if I am right and there is some unmet human need here, it is not obvious how to achieve it. Sin taxes must be a good thing, and surely more of the revenue collected should go towards preventing and ameliorating addictions. That obligation should include specialist venues and other sponsors like sports teams who are so eager to take gambling industry money. I saw little evidence of any of that in New Orleans.

Even harder is developing new alternatives to getting wasted as a means of finding fulfilment. Perhaps this is the ultimate argument for supporting the arts in schools and communities, as well as other civic activities like volunteering. It is all very woolly and perhaps the next generation will solve the conundrum all by themselves.

But, as I sat half awake on that red eye flight back from the Big Easy, I couldn’t help but feel that humanity should be making a more healthy job of finding fulfilment through leisure by now.