What A Wonderful World

I see streets of community and love,

I see pain and suffering, anger and strive

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

I can’t help but appreciate every aspect of life walking around New Orleans. There is a jena se quoi I have never experienced before. Everything around me is a constant reminder of celebration and of horrific pain and suffering. There is a juxtaposition of the painful past but a celebration of rebirth and renewal everywhere around me in New Orleans. I see it in how the city paints beautiful murals and maintains rooted history even when Hurricane season comes every year and wipes away homes and loved ones. I see it in the Second Line Parades in the Treme, where the community celebrates itself so intensely and with so much love. Yet, parades take place right along the streets where they are heavily policed and are living paycheck to paycheck, increasing the levels of death and poverty in such a vibrant community. I hear it in the Jazz music played, in the passion that the musicians play with, the pain that exists in the bellows of the music. The expressions of Jazz and the Blues, the lives behind the musicians making the music, and the history of the trumpet buuuup.

I see it in an amazing vibrant community of New Orleans, right downriver from Plantations with ugly history, that is often attempted to be erased but is heavily part of why this city is what it is today. This pain and celebration are what makes New Orleans what it is, and what creates the experiences of Black people who are heavily influenced in making New Orleans what it is, creating the raw culture of expression, love, pain, and death; everything that encompasses life and what makes it so wonderful. As I take on New Orleans, through the food, culture, and music, the more I feel like I belong, the more I find myself and parts of me, and the more I can say what a wonderful world.

As we entered the wonderful place of New Orleans, I was 3 days away from my 23rd birthday. 3 days away from aging just a little more, and entering a new stage of maturity and reflection. This being the first birthday away from my closest family and friends, it really felt like a growing moment for me. I was eager to make plans for Bourbon St, Frenchman St, and other fun places while balancing my hunger for cajun food, beignets, and crawfish etouffe. It was also a state of reflection, a reminder of the lack of immortality in my life. As we read Interview with a Vampire by the late, great Anne Rice, I was struct with a question about being immorality young, and never growing up. As I age, I learn more that my perspective on life is wrapped around my experiences, and aging is what makes life worth living.

“As I get a little older, I realize life is perspective. And my perspective may differ from yours.” - Kendrick Lamar, The Heart Part 5

And Death. Death is an important part of what makes culture what it is, and what makes life so precious. Without death, we aren’t able to celebrate life, and what makes life so living. Without death, we aren’t able to reflect on what gave it all meaning. The history up the Mississippi River of what life used to be like for Black people in New Orleans, enslavement and captivity. This upriver from the vibrant and loving community of Black people that thrive, and are so familial compared to the culture in Los Angeles. The Treme’s celebration of life through the Second Line Parades taught me that this transition from enslavement to freedom, although still a struggle in life, itself is a sign for celebration.

The tombs that rise above the ground in gothic Catholic style are right along the route of these celebrations are a representation to everyone of how short life is, and how we should enjoy it while we are still here.

Thinking about Death specifically, makes me ponder the life of Buddy Bolden. Bolden’s life is an embodiment of Jazz: the sex, love, and pain of a musician’s life are worth living for, and worth interpreting how it tells us a story of their life, but also the communities they thrived in. The abandonment, the deceit, and tricks. The music he made is the narrative of New Orleans, the narrative of the Black community in New Orleans. His cornet acts as a dialogue to the story of segregation and racism, and what these conditions have created. Decades of pain, decades of lynching, and second-class citizenship. But the people of the Treme and Storyville, the predominately Black, red-light district during the 1900s New Orleans, continued to thrive and celebrate living. Bolden’s music embodies this and tells the story of this representation, of New Orleans. These stories embody me, as a Black woman, trying to find the meaning of what life is living for.

Pink house in the Garden District! My favorite.

This representation and history; the sex, pain, music, and culture is the blood in the veins of New Orleans and makes it the city it is today. All of New Orleans’ historical literary history, to its history of enslavement, and too now; the aging of this city continues to shape her beauty, all working simultaneously. We have explored New Orleans for a week, exploring the debauchery of Bourbon St, the wonders of the Garden District, to the poverty of the Treme. Death and youth are what are heavily pondering my mind as we tour centuries-old tombs, as my birthday comes and passes, and as I see the weathered faces of the community here, all in tandem with reading Interview with The Vampire. Louis, the vampire being interviewed, gives a long history of his life, and his experiences, to conclude that internal life is not what it is made out to be – all for Louis to conclude that his life is not worth living, human mortal life is. In this poetic way, Louis is suggesting that death and aging is what keeps us alive, keeps us hungry to live, and what keeps us celebrating life.

New Orleans is an embodiment of birth and rebirth, it is in the air, in the uprooting of the trees, and the broken cobblestone on the road and on the streets. It is in the hurricanes that come every season and clears away and makes space for anew. I hear it in the brass bands playing in the French Quarter, and the artist singing their songs of love and pain. I see it in the aura and in the literary expressions of the writers that have existed here. It is in the music that is created, in the celebrations of life, in the second-line parades, and in the way, the Black community celebrates life after death. It that wonderous jena se quoi I mentioned earlier.

Being a Black woman in America, and experiencing life in New Orleans has given me more context to living. It has taught me how to live and age gracefully, by embracing community, music, culture, and love. As I age, I learn more about what is important to me and what I need to learn. Being a Black woman also means I am stripped of my femininity, and of my ancestors. Learning about myself means embracing these bad things, and embracing the community, music, and life that can help it all define me as I continue to grow.

The life of Buddy Bolden, of jazz, and the life of Lestat and Louis tell me a story of the beauty of life. How the ups and downs, the pain and suffering, and the celebration all communicates the wonder of life. I see the beauty in how community shapes you, and how a village can literally raise you. The cycles of death and rebirth in this city show me that as I age and live life, I gain perspective through experiences, community, and love. To gain these insights, I have to go through cycles of pain, confusion, and rebirth. And through this culture, music, and love of this city, I learn that this all is what makes life worth living. As I age, I can’t help but think to myself. What a wonderful world.