The Noise part 1

I have not been back to New Orleans since Katrina. I'm terrified to see the place. I was in New Orleans, briefly, in 2001 trying to hustle a buck. I was back there in the spring of 2005 as my ex and I were pushing our way to the Atlantic.

In 2001, I had just come off a few years of trying to be someone else. Trying to be someone else so seldom ends well. The fall of 2000 had me knee deep in words. I had come back to myself for the first time in a few years. I had explained to all the people, the responsible people in my life that I just wanted to write, and living life for a paycheck and too many other stupid things was taking my time, energy and life away from what I really wanted to do, and that was write.

I know there are people out there who want to write, or make art, and they feel unsure of it. If you worry about all the things “they” tell you to worry about and that takes you away from what you really want to do, question everything. If you think you'll have time “someday” for what it really important to you, question everything. If someone tells you that you have to do something that is not what you want to do, question everything.

Yes, by the time I wandered into New Orleans the first time, I had already made the decision that I was going to drink a lot of coffee, smoke a lot of cigarettes and stay up all night in coffeehouses and write in my notebook with abandon. I did not need to do anything else. And anything else I had to do was only to maintain what I wanted to do. I made that decision in New Orleans in January 2001. I haven't really looked back even though I no longer linger in coffeehouses and I don't smoke.

The second go around in New Orleans I was with another person and I was another person. All I really remember of the second New Orleans experience is all I really remember about my ex wife: the bar. We were bar people. We were bar people from Tucson, Arizona to New York City. We were bar people all across Greece. We smoked cigarettes and drank heavily. We'd smoke weed and we'd fight. This, as you may imagine was not a good time for anyone involved. What the time did for me ultimately was to give me a deeper understanding of conflict and how to draft dialogue steeped in conflict.

Yet, there we were in the Big Easy again.

We got a cellphone there, something to help keep in touch with our friends and family. Incidentally, I did not want to keep in touch with my friends and family. But there we were, a cellphone between us.

Now, this cellphone in one way was the best thing I ever had. This cellphone had a digital camera. I had stopped taking photos for some reason. I just stopped. I had had a few boring years of life and I lost the drive for taking pictures. Suddenly I had this 1.1 megapixel flip phone camera that rekindled some interest. Man, this thing was great even if the images were small, distorted and grainy.

No, they were not grainy. Grainy is an old term. These images had digital “noise.”

When I got my first digital camera, I was in Tucson. Tucson would become a wellspring of creativity for me. I would write for days on end, and I would snap pictures of flowers, insects and busted buildings. The digital camera made very clear images and my writing would become small, distorted and noisy.

In many ways I saw clearer and I became smaller, more distorted and noisier.