The Bird was Free at Last

Preservation Hall, before the performers walked in

It is scorchingly hot. I feel like my skin melting off, just an everyday shedding season here in the heart of New Orleans. We walk to the place, having no sight of what’s inside thus far, and stand in line for about 30 minutes. It is getting a bit difficult to remain sane in the humidity.

The organizer tells us she will begin calling us in 5 minutes. HURRAY, I thought. We start walking in and I am perplexed. I don’t know what I thought Preservation Hall would look like but it was certainly not that. A garage-size space with no AC, and only about 4 ceiling fans, 2 of which were off. Being hot is all in my mind, trying to reassure myself. Think … cool thoughts. I look around the walls, trying to distract myself. The place is old. But there is a certain charm about it. The walls are rusty but in an inviting way. I started noticing the posters on the walls. Depictions of intriguing, almost animated, figures holding instruments. They looked like caricatures and I was fascinated. One of the band members entered, his energy higher than what I had experienced in the city. I can already imagine the energy he will exude when he plays the trombone. In the next 5 minutes, the rest of the band members come trickling in. I can feel the energy in the room gradually increase with the entrance of each member. There is a moment of silence. The trumpet player gives a quick introduction to the band members, and before I know it, I am transported to another world. A world of harmonious chaos. Jazz was an oxymoron. It didn’t make sense. One second I felt an overwhelming sense of calm and the next I felt uneasy from the loss of structure. Jazz is a representation of life. It is the unexpected. It is the joy. It is the intrigue. It is the suffering. I was so engulfed in this experience, I completely forgot I could not handle the heat a few minutes ago. After all, the struggle was all in my mind.

“Attracted to opposites again, to the crazy music he chose to die listening to, bitching at new experiments, the chaos...”

— Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

Posters of some of the jazz performers on the wall just outside Preservation Hall

The enclosed feeling I know too well comes over me. I feel like a caged bird yearning to break free. Yearning to get on stage. Yearning to perform. My humming intensifies but I can’t quite reach that point of satisfaction I have been craving for years. I am afraid. I feel myself shoving this passionate bird back into the cage every time I see a performance. One day, I tell myself. The feeling goes away quickly, as it usually does.

As the performance comes to an end, I am incredibly elated. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for life. I rush toward the stage, eager to greet the performers. I take a selfie with my new friend, the energetic character I will never forget. From that day on, it was him I channeled in the city, that inviting sense of acting on your most authentic self, a staple in jazz. I walked out of Preservation Hall, eager to get a souvenir to treasure this incredibly fulfilling experience. As I look through the hats and try one on, I make eye contact with the drummer, a young man, who is sitting in the merch area. I don’t know why, my hand shoots up and I start waving. He smiles and waves back. I exclaim: “Good job!” … Uhm …why did I wave to him as if he was a close friend? I didn’t know what came over me but the moment did not feel awkward at all. While I would usually feel embarrassed by a moment like this, I felt happy instead. I felt like I had known him for years. Maybe it’s jazz. It facilitates understanding. It communicates things words cannot. 

One of the locals explaining how Tom’s “club” works and who partakes in it

From that day on, I knew I had to take advantage of any music experience I could in the city. So, when Andrew asked if we wanted to see a bluegrass and cajun performance at a fiddle shop, there was no question in my mind. I could not wait to see it. Andrew had found Tom’s Fiddle and Bow Shop off of Facebook and it was in some obscure part of Louisiana about 2.5 hours away called Arnaudville. When I asked Andrew if Arnaudville was a common tourist attraction, he said something along the lines of “I don’t think any tourist has been to this city.” I was more excited by this response. It took me some point but I realized what I loved about Louisiana was the mundane. The people. The nature. A bunch of locals, mostly elderly, getting together to jam to bluegrass music. This was the South. The welcoming, warm camaraderie inside the home and outside.

Arriving in Arnaudville, I didn’t know what to expect but I was beyond excited. As soon as I walk in, I hear the sweet sounds of guitar and violin in an unstable harmony. Violins ranging in all sizes hanging around. About 5 kind-looking elderly men smiling at us. I felt at home. They started playing again. I am so happy, I catch myself nodding along, feet moving to the rhythm, with the biggest smile on my face. Another song finished. Two seconds into the next one, I hear the voice of one of the elderly. THEY STARTED SINGING! Oh, I could not contain my excitement. Everything was majestic. The little harmonies with each lead singer. The polite “stepping back,” lowering of the volume of the instruments to allow each performer to shine. The merry smiles of affection toward the audience after every applause. The mundane was beautiful.

The performers at Tom’s Fiddle and Bow shop

There it is again. The caged bird yearning to escape. Yearning to join the world of this harmonious elegance. Yearning to perform. I had to do it. It was the perfect opportunity. I patiently wait until it was the right time and asked if I could request a song. Getting a positive response, I ask for “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. After a few short remarks about the right chords, pensive looks, and nods of “we got it,” they turn to me: “You know the words?” My heart started pounding. I secretly want to go up there and sing but I am afraid. I have never done anything like this. I tend to work behind the stage, never on the stage. I answer, “I probably remember a good amount.” One of the locals looks at me, “Come sit here.” Not only is my heart pounding, I am shaking. Nervous excitement. I look around. A bunch of kind elderly men looking at me, smiling. I felt safe. I didn’t feel judged. So, I did. I sang Jolene. Was I good? Not really, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all. The bird was free at last. The bird was free.

“The right ending is an open door you can’t see too far out of. It can mean exactly the opposite of what you are thinking.”

— Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

The Silence was Loud

“Art is a wound turned into light.”

— Georges Braque (French artist)

The church in the Whitney Plantation, where statues of black enslaved children stand

“People do plantation weddings…” My jaw dropped. I wasn’t listening to the tour guide anymore. My brain had reached its capacity, unable to comprehend anything else, which usually happens when I wreck my brain over a tough finance problem. It was too baffling. Celebrating where a black enslaved person was lashed to death over not hitting absurd cotton-picking targets. Celebrating where enslaved people were beheaded for attempting to rebel against being enslaved. Celebrating where blood, sweat, and tears had been shed. It’s just wrong.

As I started my way into the Whitney Plantation, every step seemed like I was stepping through barbed wire, bleeding more and more as I went deeper. Statues of children in ragged clothes in every corner, their faces burning with despair, forever stripped of childhood innocence. I felt each kid trying to scream for help but not finding the words or more accurately, not having anyone to listen to them. Reminds me of a recurring nightmare I had where I would lose the ability to scream in times of need. The enslaved people were stripped of their voice and their freedom, constantly in shackles whilst enduring the worst physical and mental pain one could imagine.

The plantation was disturbingly quiet. It was piercing my ears. No birds chirping. No sliver of wind. Only nature and trauma. The silence was loud.

“Slave Rebellion Heads” in the Whitney Plantation, representing the hundreds of enslaved people beheaded after the 1811 slave rebellion

It kept getting worse and worse. I was walking from exhibit to exhibit, listening to the accompanying audio about the stories of trauma behind each location. I noticed something sinister in the distance: a bunch of metal circles on what looked like sticks. It was some sort of statue I couldn’t yet make out. As I got closer, my heart sank. The metal circles were depicted to be the heads of enslaved persons. The exhibits tell the stories of those beheaded after the slave uprising of 1811, the heads propped on sticks by the slaveowners to terrify the rest of the slaves. I froze. I felt my emotions shifting from shock and sadness to pure anger. Being a descendant of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, this hits close to home. The sheer evil in humanity is sometimes unfathomable. I can’t help but imagine a descendant of an enslaved person walking through this plantation, seeing the exhibit of their people beheaded. I can’t imagine the pain. 

“Who has the rights to the story of a place? Are these rights earned, bought, fought and died for? Or are they given? Are they automatic, like an assumption? Self-renewing? Are these rights a token of citizenship belonging to those who stay in the place or to those who leave and come back to it? Does the act of leaving relinquish one’s rights to the story of a place? Who stays gone? Who can afford to return?”

— Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

This site once was a house, wipe out by Hurricane Katrina, located in Lower Ninth War of New Orleans

As I walk further into the plantation, I can’t help but think of the role locations play in history. The Whitney Plantation will never be anything other than the stories of the hundreds of enslaved people mentally and physically abused to subservience and death. As much as one tries to forget, the silence is deafening. The significance of location in stories is a common theme throughout The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah M. Broom. Throughout the book, Sarah wrestles with the concept of memory in a place. She wanted to forget the memories of the Yellow House, the worn-out home the children were often embarrassed by, where they had to experience a lot of hardship. But when she sees the house destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, she is perplexed. Her brother walks into the frail house, searching for the bits of memory that the hurricane had wiped out. Over the course of the novel, Sarah leaves New Orleans but ends up settling back in her hometown, pulled by memories of the Yellow House, despite the destruction of its physical structure. As much as a place gets changed by outside influence, stories get engrained in places. The plantations where people have weddings will always be the plantations where innocent children, women, and men were brutally abused into servitude and killed. The memories will never die down. 

“I did want the Yellow House gone, but mostly from mind, wanted to be free from its lock and chain of memory, but did not, could not, foresee water bum-rushing it.”

— Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

A house affected by Hurricane Katrina in the Upper Ninth area of New Orleans

The day before visiting the plantation, we watched 12 Years a Slave, a movie about Solomon Northup, a free person of color who was forced back into slavery for a period of a few years. Slavery is not only characterized by the mental and physical abuse endured by the enslaved, but the years completely erased from lives. Solomon Northup is a classic disturbing example. The period of years he was forced into slavery represents the years stripped from him as a husband, as a father, and as he later finds out after he is freed, as a grandfather. In the powerful scene when he returns home, his little kids have grown into adults, in the blink of an eye. His daughter has gotten married and has a child, a child she has named Solomon Northup. Tears uncontrollably flowed down my face. Solomon represents the thousands of enslaved people stripped of these memories, stripped of opportunities, stripped of love and every other positive emotion. These are years Solomon and people like Solomon never got back. The memories that burned into history, burned into sites like the Whitney Plantation. Frozen memories stripped of life.

The black trauma did not end with the abolition of slavery. As we have seen in our study of black history, the system has time and time again failed African Americans. The legacy of slavery was continued through the Jim Crow South and sharecropping. Moving into the 2000s, in New Orleans East where The Yellow House was based, many houses destroyed by Hurricane Katrina still have not been rebuilt. This is due to deep economic and political issues of the area, such as the subpar insurance in the region that left many in desperate situations. Driving through these communities in 2024, I had to do more research to get the full story. One way the government failed low-income black communities in southeast Louisiana was by failing to replace the fragile levees near these communities, causing them to collapse during the hurricane, which inflicted immense damage and pain. The pain that persists throughout generations.

“Without that physical structure, we are the house that bears itself up. I was now the house.”

— Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

Death was close to life

NEW ORLEANS, HERE WE COME!

The gazebo in Houma next to Jeaux’s Cafe

I was grateful for Grand Isle, but I was ready for the city. Off we go to New Orleans. But first, a stop at Houma for a quick coffee and some beignets at Downtown Jeaux Coffee Cafe. The one word I would use to describe our drive to Houma would be discovery. Bits of Houma made me feel at home. The beignets reminded me of an Armenian fried dough pastry called "ponchik". Right in fron of the cafe, I saw a gazebo! Lorelai, where are you? My favorite comfort show, Gilmore Girls, has a gazebo where many important moments take place, such as (SPOILER ALERT) the main character Lorelai’s long-awaited kiss with Luke. Houma welcomed me with open arms.

After an hour of downtime at the coffee shop, a few of us broke off to venture around the city. Something sinister caught my eye. A graveyard next to a Catholic school. I had to go closer. As we walked by the graveyard we saw a few cars parked on the street, waiting to pick up their kids from school. Parents parked next to a graveyard to pick up their kids. It was a real life paradox.

One of my worst fears is losing a family member. Much to my discomfort, in Louisiana, death was so close to life. Huge cemeteries right next to schools, houses, shopping places. It was almost like death didn’t have a negative connotation. This was my first introduction to gothic southern Louisiana, a prelude to the king of everything gothic, New Orleans. 

“Over and over I dreamed that he was at the head of the steps and I was holding his arm, talking kindly to him, urging him back into the bedroom, telling him gently that I did believe him, that he must pray for me to have faith.”

— Louis in Interview with the Vampire

Graveyard next to St. Francis De Sales Cathedral School in Houma

We entered the cemetery. Walking through it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Louis’s brother’s death. At the beginning of Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, Louis has a hard time accepting his brother’s death. He feels responsible for his death. He feels the creeping shadow that often follows grief: regret. Louis had laughed at his brother’s devotion to God. He had rejected his brother’s visions and had refused to partake in them. I felt sheer discomfort reading through this section, just as I had felt walking through that cemetery. I started thinking about my family and immediately shut down those thoughts. Death is terrifying for me. Living with grief is frightening. Add a sprinkle of regret and … hard to imagine living with grief and regret at the same time.

Interestingly, the way Louis responded to grief was getting closer to death, involuntarily. He got attacked and became a vampire. He saw Lestat kill. He saw Claudia kill. And he eventually killed. By this point, the novel felt less real. My mind exited the real world and entered a fantastical dark world. A gothic escape called New Orleans. As we got to Jackson Square, the gothic images were incessant. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a Voodoo shop I would retire tomorrow. Death was almost glorified. The vampire cafe with its “Blood bag” drink. The voodoo museum with its sinister images that attracted many tourists. The “friendly ghosts” that roam around Jackson Square. Death was close to life in New Orleans but I was no longer afraid. It almost reminded me of Louis’s parallel journey with death, transforming from avoiding it to taking part in it. 

“I never saw a living, pulsing human being until I was a vampire; I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over my lips, my hands!”

— Louis in Interview with the Vampire

Horse-drawn carriage in the French Quarter

This theme of glorification of death followed me everywhere I went in southern Louisiana. One day, Daniela and I were preparing to go to The Shop to read when we ran into Kevin, the manager of the Lafayette Hotel we are staying at in the Central Business District. He started asking us about our day and by the end of the conversation, we had somehow plunged into a 20-minute snapshot of the culture shock he experienced when moving to New Orleans. He was reminiscing on the first funeral he went to. A minute into the topic he mentioned “jazz funeral”. A jazz funeral!? Wow, there was nothing intuitive about this city. There was young Kevin, astonished at what seemed like a festival accompanying the dead into the grave. During a jazz funeral, after the body is deposited into the ground, a jazz procession follows that signifies a celebration of life. I was intrigued. Here I am, terrified of death, avoiding the thought of it any chance I get while there was a whole culture out there playing jazz during someone’s burial, celebrating the life the person lived. This concept was incredibly eye-opening. At some point in Interview with the Vampire, in a heated discussion with Lestat about their vampire nature, Louis has an epiphany. He realizes he appreciates life so much more now, having taken part in taking it away. On a similar note, one must celebrate life before it’s too late. Let the celebration of life after death not be the first and only time we celebrate life.

“It’s funny when you’re dead how people start listening.”

— Song "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry

St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square

But bits of the city brought back the creeping discomfort. New Orleans was also like a real life paradox. As we first stepped foot in Jackson Square, a grand structure looked down on me. St Louis Cathedral. A cathedral in the midst of dark imagery, how ironic. As a Christian, I had been avoiding anything Voodoo simply because of the discomfort I felt. But on the day we went to the Voodoo Museum, I decided to try the experience. Walking inside, I felt like an “other” again. But feeling like an “other” was no longer a source of discomfort. As I mentioned before, it was a sign that I was growing closer to my true self. I was growing closer to faith and with that came the feeling of not fitting in. And I am ok with that. I long to fully find myself. And be unapologetically myself. Stick to my core beliefs, just like Louis’s brother did. He died being true to himself.

“...he never wavered in his conviction for a second.”

— Louis in Interview with the Vampire

Quest for Happiness in Grand Isle

An interactive wall in Houma that I wrote on: “Before I die, I want to define happiness.“

A petite house named “Therapy” in Grand Isle

As I embark on Bookpacking Louisiana, I am on a journey to define happiness. My days in Grand Isle were the beginning of this rather never-ending pursuit. I inspected every person and object through a magnifying glass, searching for bits of happiness and I found happiness sprinkled all over Grand Isle. In my little pursuit, the street names caught my attention first. As we entered Grand Isle, slowly getting near our destination, I expected names with great historical narratives but what I witnessed was rather surprising: Strawberry Lane, Orange Lane, Fig Lane, Cherry Lane. It seemed fantastical as if hundreds of the said fruit would drop from the sky as we passed each lane. Life was simple. 

In fact, this theme of simplicity was clear throughout every experience on the island. Almost every house had a creative name ranging from Shrimp Dipping to Therapy to La La Land. One of our main takeout spots was Jo-Bob’s. Now, you might be wondering who Jo-Bob is, probably the owner of the place who has been a local for 60+ years and served the people of Grand Isle proudly for all those years. No, Jo-Bob is a cat. A fluffy gray cat that lives in its own little cat nest by the entrance and who occasionally walks down the stairs to greet incoming visitors. Life was simple.

“The flowers were like new acquaintances; she approached them in a familiar spirit, and made herself at home among them.”

— Kate Chopin

Although Edna was mostly preoccupied with figuring herself and her emotions out, she slowly became aware of her surroundings as well. In the midst of her first awakening, Edna walks around the house she has lived in for years as if she has never seen it. She looks at the world from a different perspective that allows her to become more aware of her surroundings, rather than walking blindly through life. This is part of Edna’s pursuit of a sense of identity much like my pursuit of happiness. 

“A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.”

— Kate Chopin

Edna’s greatest realization, in my view, was learning to spend time alone, self-reflecting. She realizes she does not want to live by societal expectations. She disobeys her husband, exclaiming that she is no longer one of his possessions, becomes less attentive to her kids, and moves into a separate house alone. She finds herself resisting societal expectations, like a bird with a broken wing, fluttering around. My time at Grand Isle was nothing short of these profound self-reflecting moments. There is something about the place, whether it’s the waves that hypnotize you with their calming yet chaotic reverb or the pelicans that fly above without a care in the world. It slows down your mind. Life was slow in Grand Isle. Life was simple.

Pelicans flying over Grand Isle

“The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”

— Kate Chopin

View of the Gulf of Mexico from the porch in Grand Isle

As much as Grand Isle felt like an escape from reality, glimpses of pressure and responsibility kept creeping in. But for the first time, I was not worried about doing work besides reading. I am someone whom people might describe as a workaholic at times but it was almost like my mind was in rebellion of my usual state. I did not want to work and I didn’t. I just wanted to make my cup of coffee, make an omelet, grab my Kindle, and sit outside and read, with the view of the ocean. This is so not me. My mind doesn’t slow down. In fact, I feel very uncomfortable when I have to slow down. In anything. I thrive under pressure. I am stressed when I have nothing to do. But on the third day in Grand Isle, the sea was calling. Solitude was calling. So, I listened. I took a towel and started walking towards the beach. Alone. As I was getting close to shore, a flock of pelicans fluttered by, as if applauding my strides into solitude. And so, I laid my towel down on the damp sand and I sat, staring into the blue and serene abyss. And the feeling of utter discomfort crept in. How could I just sit there and not think about the million tasks I have yet to finish? How do I silence my mind? I needed a distraction. Of course, I picked up my phone but instead of opening social media, I called my brother. And the feeling of comfort slowly started coming back. But I was too engulfed with the idea of being alone on a deserted beach so every conversation centered around that. The longing for quiet was growing a bit too loud. “I have to go. I’ve got some thinking to do,” I told my brother and proceeded to end the call. I watched. I watched the waves crash in front of me, one after the other. I watched the pelicans stop by and mistake shells for food. I watched the clouds and their pensive movements. Life was simple.

A pelican enjoying the sun in the Gulf of Mexico

I felt people staring at me and judging me. I looked around. No soul in sight. I looked back at our house. Everyone was inside minding their own business. I felt like Edna. Here I was, engulfed by my thoughts while people were watching a movie in the main house, just as the rest of the family was dancing in the main house in Edna’s universe. It felt like a movie scene. I felt like an “other.” But over the past year, I have grown to love being an “other.” It is almost a signal that I’m staying true to myself. I am speaking my mind when need be. I am staying silent when need be. I am disengaging myself from conversations when need be. I’m not sure if Edna ever felt fully comfortable with herself besides those last few moments. I long to not only reach this point of comfort but live with it and figure out its many complexities. Life was not simple.