*

I know it’s not politically correct or sensitive to say stuff like “I’m so OCD” when you are just feeling particularly irked about something not being organized. With that said, the past week I have felt like Buddy. I don’t want to have an overarching blog opinion on a novel that is anything but comprehensive. The novel made me feel a million different twisted ways so I will write about it like so.

*

I can’t stop thinking about death. The concept breaks into shards and then starts piercing me. The constant morbid iconography attacking me from every building wall doesn’t help. It doesn’t help that Andrew decides to stop by a graveyard either. My grandma has been hospitalized twice in the past two days and we are now walking through a graveyard. No biggie, she is fine right now and I am having fun cracking jokes with the group. I’m good.

We stop by another graveyard.

It's all flat, sunken. The mosquitos immediately begin their sickening assault on us. The ones here seem to love the ankles. The group continues making jokes. The noise starts to muffle out as I stare at the giant cross across the grass. It's so misplaced and beautiful. I walk towards it without a thought in my head, despite the mosquitos, lack of sunscreen, and rotted mud. I almost trip about ten-thousand times and get bitten by mosquitos about ten-thousand more, but I make it…I don’t feel much here, and forget why I came. I snap a picture, a thunderous video, and leave.

*

I am having an amazing time! I parade around the CBD constantly with music blasting in my ears. The way Buddy Bolden speaks about music towards the beginning of the book saturates my psyche. I love the way Coming Through Slaughter is written. I relish in its sporadicity. You, the reader, are already supposed to feel confused so I never feel confused. This book comforts me even more than The Awakening. I just finished the first chapter! I play some Alannah Miles while I leave The Shop. I observe many mentions of death in the first part, but they can all be romanticized through the New Orleans eye. Jessica Lange’s final scene in American Horror Story: Coven, Erte’s Symphony in Black, pomegranates and spider lilies. That’s how I will think about death in New Orleans. I know the book is about a descent into madness, but I ignore it.

*

I walk down Bourbon and hear a snippet of the most intense and invigorating music, and then it fades out. Life and death. New Orleans is easily America’s city of death. It is also one of America’s most alive cities. Jazz encompasses both.

We pass by the yellow house. In its place is a car. Junk yard. But there is a plant growing from it. It is growing from its dead engine. It grew from the dead engine and is now higher than the hood, higher than the roof. It will die. What will grow from its corpse? I play “In a Sentimental Mood” when I get back in the van. New Orleans arose from life and death. New Orleans is sinking.

“Voices said goodnight several times and the orchestra playing in the background collapsed into buzz again, a few yards away from me in your bedroom.””

Buddy loathes Robichaux because he forces the audience to listen to his planned symphonies. For Buddy, music should collapse into a buzz. For the audience, it has an unplanned start and an unplanned finish. You are forced into existence and then it fades out. Ondaatje argues jazz is the reality of life, especially for Black Americans in New Orleans, and that the formally trained violinist John Robichaux’s “waltzes,” are an idealized and pristine imagination.

*

Above ground coffins. We walk through them again. The first few I saw were in Grande Isle, where Andrew explained that the major reason for the tombs being above ground is not actually the frequent flooding, but rather the religious influence. He continues to remind us of this in New Orleans. But he has made a point to justify the French and British ways of life, work to live versus live to work, as a result of their fertile versus harsh land. He has also made a point to say that New Orleans is America’s literary playground because of the city’s natural, swampy landscape. I find it funny that he strays from his repeated cultural ecology to be so adamant about debunking the tombs’ weather origins. I believe him though. I believe him without a second thought because he also mentions the family burials. I see this is religious because Greek Orthodox do just the same. Why does Greece have to be part of this? I’m not French, West African, Spanish, German, Irish, Native American. My identity should not be here. Each time I pass a tombstone with too many names on it I picture my grandfather’s grave in Afantou. Αντώνης Δανεήλας (Andonis Daneilas). It is below Sabbas Daneilas, who is below Andonis Daneilas. Another Sabbas Daneilas will be below my grandfather when my dad passes. Will another Andonis Daneilas be below him? I envision the comfort of resting with family, whatever that means. But I am not religious or spiritual, I don’t believe in a soul’s resting place. I can sign over my body for medical practices. I’ll be a good person. But what if I meet the fate of one of the USC cadavers sent to the IDF? They don’t deserve my body, they disgust me. I don’t want to be tested on by anyone. No one deserves my body. My family deserves my body. I’m a bit nauseous.

*

Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell

Jimmy Rodgers on the Victrola up high

Mama’s dancin’ with the baby on her shoulder

The sun is settin’ like molasses in the sky

*

Edna and Buddy are similar. They both get consumed by New Orleans and slide down into madness. Edna’s decline had represented the inability for a woman to both live freely and be viewed as sane in a restrictive society. The French lifestyle taunted her, tossing vulgar books around, making her feel like she could be free with her sex and her time. But we know she couldn’t. Buddy’s is more literal and physical. He is debilitating. The city gets to him, with its heat, its alcohol, and above all its inescapable lust. Bellocque takes photos of Buddy, Bellocque takes photos of the Storyville whores. Buddy describes these mattress whores. Buddy describes himself.

“And the ones not caught yet carrying their disease like coy girls into and among the rocks…those who are lame thrusting their fat foot at you, immune from the swinging stick that has already got them swelled and fixed in a deformed walk, gypsy foot gypsy foot…their bodies murdered and my brain suicided…my brain tonight has a mattress strapped to its back””

Buddy views sex as harmonious. Its musical physicality combines both the brain and body. So viewing the women he has experienced he sees the present and future for himself in them. Their body and his brain.

I previously came to the conclusion that I would not revel in my connection to Edna. I saw our flaws and decided to work on myself. I do the same with Buddy. I will confront the part of this trip that scares me and why I walked over to that cross.

*

I see a dead racoon on my walk to Tulane. An eighty-minute walk. St. Charles and Calhoon is the entrance to Tulane for those taking the streetcar. This was my exit. This part of Tulane was where I grieved my friend. “Baile Inolvidable” plays in my head, as it did when I walked around sniffling about him a year ago. I just keep dancing, don't I? My heart starts beating faster and I tremble a bit entering the school. A few tears start welling but I brush them off because an old lady smiles at me. He was studying to be a vet at UC Irvine. We were close when he first came to my high school, but by the time of graduation we had just drifted off. We were supposed to meet up two summers ago, but I flaked. I don’t remember the last conversation we had. I do remember walking around the Richardson Building at night, seven days after I heard he passed away. I was gonna write him a letter. I remember the cat I saw after writing the letter. It was laying down, could have used a vet. I see the same cat. It's in the same spot it was that night. The tears do more than well up.

I sit on the bench I wrote to him, and finish my fourth blog post.

*

I attempt to recite thanaptosis in the southern Necropolis. Θέλω την ηρεμία μου. I instead get devoured by the macabre.