"Fuck the Myths, What About the Real New Orleans?"
"Bird of Fire" by James W. BaileyPhotographed at Lake Pontchartrain
For my friend Blake, one of the last of the original New Orleans Saints.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to be 20 again.
When you’re 20, you’re an idiot. You think you’ve been there, done that, seen it all, know it all and are the be-all end-all of the whole fucking universe…or at least I was that way, which I’m not hesitant to admit.
When I was 20 I moved to New Orleans from Mississippi. I thought I knew everything there was to know about New Orleans. But within days of taking up residence in the city, I very quickly had all my myths about that mythical place popped by a very sharp and pointed reality; I painfully discovered that I really knew nothing.
My first year of life in New Orleans was tough; I nearly packed and left for home on dozens of occasions – it was, to put it mildly, an extreme case of severe culture shock. As wild and unearthly as the people of Mississippi can be, New Orleanians are from another fucking planet. Their ways, customs, traditions and language are strange, bizarre, irrational, completely over the edge and totally unfathomable.
But then one day, after having many a one-night stand with a string of dreamy misconceptions about the city, I woke up in bed next to this woman named New Orleans and realized that I had fallen in love with her. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but for this love to blossom, I had to drop my guard, lower my pretensions, think with my irrational heart and libertine soul, and let my wild emotions and unearthly passions rule my mind, body and spirit.
I was fortunate to have met people from New Orleans (people who were and are the real deal, who are real New Orleanians), who showed me how to let go and just be myself as an artist.
One such friend was an artist named Blake. Blake was indeed the real deal, a real New Orleanian, born and raised in the Lower 9th Ward, the Yat capital of the universe. Blake didn’t have opinions on subjects - he had what he called “pent-up playmate truths”. Everything that came out of his mouth was a “pent-up playmate truth”, honed from years of living a below sea level existence spent examining and reconciling the complexities of modern life with the timeless spirit of the Big Easy.
During a three year period of time, from 1984-1987, I became obsessed with recording conversations with some of the more unusual native New Orleanians whom I came to love, respect and appreciate. The passion they inject into the language they use to express their “pent-up playmate truths” inspired me to convert to their philosophy – a philosophy that says embrace yourself for who you are no matter what anybody thinks, a philosophy that says live your life for the day and have no shame in it, a philosophy that says what happens to you tomorrow is somebody else’s fucking problem.
My friend Blake committed suicide in 1989 after a long struggle with depression. The following conversation between us was recorded in the fall of 1985 while we sat on the marble steps in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
I was in my 20s when this conversation took place; I was also that night in another of my endless depressed rant moods about how “this fuckin' town is a joke and I’m gettin’ the hell out of here as fast as humanly fuckin' possible”.
Blake always had a way of bringing the realities about life in New Orleans back to a “pent-up playmate truth” for me.
We were both drunk as shit the night I recorded the following.
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2:30 am...The New Orleans Museum of Art...City Park...New Orleans…The Big Easy…The Crescent City…The City that Care Forgot…The fucking city I regret I ever fucking moved to…Daring to be different you become the standard of conformity...the individualistic metaphor of non‑differentiation...The more you strive to separate yourself from the masses...the more the masses become just like you...To dare to be really different...is to dare others to be totally different from you.
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- You and that fucking tape recorder, man.
‑ Yeah, anyway. It's so disgusting here, Blake...I don't know why I even bother to come to this cultural tomb, man.
‑ Because you're an art lover, James.
‑ But this isn't art, Blake. I mean, the whole concept of an art museum is so, is so antithetical to what art is supposed to be about. It's like this museum itself is some kind of weird above ground burial tomb for the dead decayed corpses of popular crap culture.
‑ Yes, the New Orleans Museum of Art is like a microcosm of the city itself. Did you know that even though this is supposed to be a public museum that they actually shut the whole place down at times to cater private soirees for the uptown crowd? Al Copeland, the Popeye's fried chicken king, even tried to land a helicopter on the roof for a grand entrance to his wedding reception the last time he got married. There's nothing that can compete with a buffoon who's got a shit-load of money to burn. It's like the rich of New Orleans will spend thousands of dollars to host a party in an art museum, but they won't spend a dime supporting the cutting edge visionary works of local artists that haven't been officially sanctioned and stamped with the imprimatur of having been granted a small amount of space on the wall of the local museum.
‑ It's a talismic system...the artist in contemporary American society is no longer a functional artist at all...he's dysfunctional. The insidiousness of the whole art system is that it is purposely constructed to maximize banality and minimize serious criticism. The result is that you have artists that serve as little more than field hands to produce a vibrant crop of polyester synthetic cotton to be sold on the auction block to the highest richest dumbest most banal fucking bidder. The whole system boils in a massive bullshit conspiracy of deception to control the artist...and confuse the public.
‑ Yeah, brother...have you ever noticed that green direction sign at the end of DeSaix Boulevard over by City Park that says, N O Museum of Art?
‑ No.
‑ It says N O Museum of Art...get it...N O...like in New Orleans...NO Museum of Art...isn't that cool?
‑ How apropos.
‑ Yeah...exactly.
‑ But like I was saying, the artist serves the conspiracy by subconsciously participating in it. He, because of capitalist conditioning, expects success, he wants to create that damn talisman, and he wants validation for it. He busts his ass off to get that gallery representation...that fucking museum retrospective of his early striving starving artist period. What bullshit.
‑ He wants his fifteen minutes of fame.
‑ Yes. Every damn artist in the world secretly wants to be the next fucking Warhol...And to get most of these reductionist fuckers to be honest about that you'd have to torture them into a confession.
‑ But how do you reach beyond this? What's the artist's best escape plan?
‑ Well, Marinetti suggested fire‑bombing and burning down all museums.
‑ New Orleans would never embrace anarchy, James.
‑ But that's the whole point. You don't want them to embrace it. You want them to be positively pissed off about the prospect of it.
‑ No, I didn't mean it that way. What I meant was that New Orleans would never respond in any meaningful way, whether positively or negatively, to anarchistic acts of cultural vandalism. Not the way, say, Paris would if you were to fire-bomb the Louvre.
‑ Really? You don't think so?
‑ Hell no. Really. Look...New Orleans...as a social collective...just doesn't react to any substantive interference with the images and icons of its own mythology. Now, the city is keenly aware of these images and icons, I mean, everybody born here is aware of what's what and the history and all that shit, you know, like, everybody knows the landmarks, the standard collection of myths, they know about Marie Leveau, the Quadroon Balls, the fact that Paul Morphy was crazy and walked around the French Quarter naked, that E. J. Belloque liked to photograph stalk prostitutes in Storyville. We who were born here know all that shit...We've heard it a million times...But would we really care if somebody were to launch a violent attack on all those things?...No...not at all.
‑ Why do you think that? What you're saying is incredible to me.
‑ Because I was born here and you weren't, James. It's as simple as that. And that means that I really know the city and you just think you know it. You think you do because you know New Orleans through its images and symbols. You know its literary tradition...its artistic history...because you have been educated by a lot of symbolism. And this symbolism purports a mythology that's so pervasive and powerful that the typical New Orleanian will tell you that, yes, he knows it and respects it and even loves it, but like all symbols, they are false and nobody really cares or gives a shit enough about them to waste any of his precious MTV Wheel‑of‑Fucking‑Fortune-TV-viewing-time to protect them from pseudo‑anarchist radicals like you.
‑ Interesting...So you think I'm naive about New Orleans?
‑ Yes. But that's not an insult against you...It's actually a compliment...because the essence of being truly New Orleanian is being naive. How do think we could survive our political history if we weren't naive enough to believe that the next politician we elect is going to be an honest politician. We're very naive here. Naive to the point of being dangerously stupid.
‑ And naive stupidity is the life pulse here?
‑ Exactly. That's what makes it so interesting to be born here and live here. It's like all this stupid ignorance and cultural arrogance, all this narrow‑mindedness just brews together and somehow, rather remarkably to be sure, somehow the shit that rises to the top becomes that which is appreciated the most. But...appreciated only to the extent that that shit can be skimmed off the top and discarded to the side...you know...like put it into a container...for cultural storage.
‑ So you're saying that not knowing anything is the essence of being an indigenous New Orleanian?
‑ No...not at all..What I'm saying is that not knowing anything is the essence of knowing everything and that that lack of knowledge becomes all the knowledge that is sufficient to know in order to know everything that you need to know about being a native New Orleanian.
‑ So, answer my question...Do you think that my vision of the city is naive?
‑ No...not at all...I think that it's irrelevant.
‑ Why?
‑ Because nobody that lives here that was born here could possibly give a shit about any vision you have of the city. They simply could careless. Why do you think they call New Orleans "The City That Care Forgot"?
‑ That's so cynical.
‑ Well, have you every asked any of the natives to comment on any of your insights regarding their homeland?
‑ Uh...I have found that it's rather hard to meet any locals here with whom one can have a normal conversation.
‑ Exactly...New Orleanians don't respond sequentially to anything...especially questions about something that's personal... like where they live. It's like, look, it's like everybody here thinks that they're in the goddamn Mafia or work for the fucking CIA or something. Everybody that was born in New Orleans goes through life acting like they are always doing something slightly illegal, you know what I'm saying?
‑ Yes. Yes. God, that's so true. Sometimes when I'm talking to people from here I feel like I'm talking to an ex‑convict who's on parole for forgery. People here use all kinds of code phrases. You don't know what in the hell they're saying half the time. You can never really pin anybody here down on anything.
‑ That's the way it is here. New Orleans, look, the thing you have to understand about life in New Orleans is that the city itself is not really a city...it's more like a large neighborhood. I mean, I just laugh my ass off when I hear these damn white parasites come into town...
‑ White parasites?
‑ Tourists...
‑ Oh.
‑ ...when I hear all the damn white parasites and white transplants talk about how European New Orleans is, you know, "Oh, it's just like Paris", I mean, really, that's so fucking stupid. Fuck, I've been to Paris. New Orleans doesn't have a damn thing in common with Paris. You're talking comparing apples and oranges...Rats and nutrias...It's such a joke. But it's just that it's so easy to market this mythology about the city because the mythology is so powerfully expressive...and the locals are more than content to sell it to every white parasite that wants to buy it.
‑ But I totally disagree with you. I think that some of the myths of the city are true. The myth of the gumbo cultural mix, the Latin pace of life, the strong visual imagery, the vibrant social forms of expression like the Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest and Super Sunday...
‑ You've been to Super Sunday?
‑ ...Yes. Last year. I went to photograph the Little People's place in Treme and it just so happened that the Mardi Gras Indians were parading that day...but like I was saying, I think that the colorful historical tradition and...
‑ Jesus, man, stop it. See...you're making my point. You don't sound like a serious artist...you sound like a damn Whitney bank commercial. I've heard all this shit all my life...It's like the only thing people can say about New Orleans is...the food...the music...the culture...the architecture...Shit, it doesn't take an artist to say that, man, it takes a PR person. Look, all that stuff you've just said has been sold to you by the cultural hierarchy that controls this popular imagery of this city.
‑ What are you talking about?
‑ James, the reality is that New Orleans is sixty five per cent black...I'm not talking quadroon, mulatto, Creole black I'm talking contemporary African-American inner city urban pissed-off rap-singing race-based beaten-down held-down-by-the-white-man’s-power black...Now, New Orleans also has a rather substantial white population who are more than ever, much to their chagrin, feeling totally disaffected and alienated because of their perceived diminished power and numbers. In other words, most white people here just don't give a fuck about the city anymore, especially those white muthafuckers who’ve moved out to the suburbs in Metairie, Kenner, across the lake in Mandeville and shit, since they feel like the niggas now own it. So...the reality is that New Orleans is one of the poorest cities in the country and ranks number one in every pathetic social pathological category you can name...Number one in murder, teen‑pregnancy, political corruption, you name it, if it's bad, then we're number one at it. But the image of the city, the cultural image that is sold to the outside world by the white powers that be is one of a bunch of happy fat black trombone-playing jazz-swinging Dixieland-dancing buffoons serenading Stella while she swoons in the heat and humidity from her French Quarter balcony while below her Tennessee Williams propositions a quasi‑intellectual drag queen with a drink in his hand...And what I'm telling you is that all of this bullshit imagery is controlled a small cabal of white elitists who work in an incestuous conspiracy to control every cultural venue and system of recognition that exists here. Take a look at all the names involved in the media in New Orleans. The names that appear in all the magazines like Gambit, or City Business or the Times‑Picayune or the radio stations or the TV stations. It's fucking pathetic...Everybody is married to everybody. And these are the bastards that control what gets talked about on a daily basis about and in this city. And not one damn thing gets approved for air time or column space unless they check with their friends lovers and spouses with the competition. See, don't be stupid enough to even suggest that we have anything approaching a competition mode in the media here. These assholes I'm talking about make sure that every single cultural organization is on the same page of the hymn book. And the bottom line is, the result of all this conspiring among cultural arbiters here, is that the cultural artifacts of the city that are so quickly and easily appropriated by the artists and writers and others has absolutely no bearing whatsoever to the real lived experience of your average broke ass poor black man and woman in New Orleans who are lucky if they can rub two fucking plug nickels together to pay the fucking rent to the fucking white man who owns the run down 19th century shotgun shack they live in. New Orleans has to be the only city in the world whose rapid decay continues to produce something truly beautiful to behold...as far as certain cultural elitist assholes here are concerned.
‑ But...do any of these artifacts mean anything to you? Do you care about any of them?
‑ Yes...I do...and...no...I don't.
‑ What kind of answer is that, see, that's what I was saying earlier, Blake, you people down here will not give a straight answer...
‑ You people?
‑ Yes, come on, man, I didn’t mean you people, you black people, I meant you people, you native New Orleanians...you are a native, are you not?
‑ Let me ask you something, James.
‑ Alright.
‑ What if there were no Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Jazz Fest, or music clubs? What if all the famous restaurants didn't exist? What if there were no po‑boys or snow cones or Lucky Dogs? What if there were no French Quarter or above ground historic cemeteries? What if there was no street car rumbling down St. Charles Avenue? Imagine if none of those things existed...What would you find interesting about the city then?
‑ Well...I suppose...I...I...don't know...That's a good question...What's your point?
‑ My point is that everything we just hypothetically eliminated only makes up a very, very, very tiny part of the whole city. There's a hell of a lot more to New Orleans than those things...Things you have never seen...Will probably never see...Things that matter here that nobody talks about because nobody wants to buy it because nobody talks about it. You know what I mean? Look...you want to know about the real New Orleans? Then you should talk to my damn grandfather... He's a retired thirty five year veteran of the NOPD. Shit. He could tell you some damn things about this fucking city, man. Much better than I ever could. He could tell you things about New Orleans that you wouldn't believe. Things that would make your stomach turn. Some really cruel vicious evil shit that he saw others do...both cops and criminals...do all over New Orleans when he was on the force. He could tell you some nightmare stories that would blow every one of those stupid AAA travel guide myths of yours right out the goddamn door, James. But...well...if you want to be more intellectual and less visceral about it, then my point is that John Kennedy Toole wrote a book called 'A Confederacy of Dunces' that won the Pulitzer prize in 1980...and is widely accepted by the outside world as being the definitive Bible of reality about New Orleans.
‑ Yes, it's a tremendous book. I've read it three times. It's like everything he wrote was so true about this place. The claustrophobic suffocating stupidity and Ignatius's sanctimonious revolt against the dunces aligned against him.
‑ Very good, James, but do you know what the real reality of that book is?
‑ What?
‑ The real reality is that Toole wrote the damn book in the late sixties about his view of life here in the forties and fifties and the book wasn't even published until 1980...after he fucking committed suicide.
‑ And?
‑ And he committed suicide on the Gulf coast of Mississippi...Drove to Biloxi...ran a tube from his exhaust pipe to his car interior...and breathed himself to death.
‑ But what's your point?
‑ My point is that what drove Toole to suicide was not the fictional mythology of his book or even the fact that he struggled so long to have it published after endless rejections and repeated rewrites...The point is that he committed suicide because his creative fictional view of life in New Orleans finally...and tragically...intersected with the depressing reality of his real life...his personal life here...His existential reality won out over his fictional mythology...At the end of his book, Ignatius finally leaves New Orleans to go to New York...Toole couldn't do that though...He couldn't reconcile his life with reality here. But he didn't have the guts to leave New Orleans and try making it somewhere else either. And that's the horrible paradoxical tragedy of New Orleans, James. If you're not careful as an artist here, New Orleans...New Orleans will seduce you with its Hoodoo mysticism and its unique charms and lull you into a deep sleep and the next thing you know you'll awaken to the frightening sight of New Orleans couched on your chest sucking your breath out...just like that proverbial evil cat my memere' used to tell me about when I was a kid.
‑ What are you really trying to say to me? What do you really think of my photographs? You've seen them. I feel like you're trying to criticize me...or my art...but you're being so damn...so damn typically New Orleanian about it. You're being evasive. Just say it. Drop your native inclinations to talk bullshit around the subject and just spit it out.
‑ Alright...well...I think you're really going to have a hard time making it as an artist here, man...You might do better trying to sell your photographs on the fence behind the Cathedral in the French Quarter...You know which fence I'm talking about?...Not the tourist fence...you know...the one you're at now in front of the church...I'm talking about the one behind the church. I think your stuff would really do better over there...maybe.
‑ Sell it to the white trash parasites who are too drunk to stumble over to the main fence...is that what you're saying?
‑ No...I'm saying try to sell it to those fuckers...Some of them might actually buy some of your photos...if they've been drinking enough...Hey...here's a cool marketing idea for you...You could try telling the tourists that you're the bastard son of George Rodriguez. Maybe you could come up with a photographic icon to compete with his fucking Blue Dog...Hey...how about this one?...The purple cockroach...That's it...fuck...that's it...the fucking purple cockroach. You'll be fucking famous, man...and rich. You'll make Warhol look like a goddamn amateur.
‑ So, Blake, you don't think the locals will ever be interested in my art?
‑ Uh...no.
‑ So...what do the locals like, Blake? I value your...considered opinion...you know...as an intellectual artistically cognizant native son of this culturally vapid politically reactionary backwater third world banana republic...that I so apparently and painfully don't seem to understand.
‑ Well, James, the locals here tend to love Jazz Fest posters...especially the signed limited edition ones...They eat those goddamn things right up like free crawfish at a charity fundraiser boil.
‑ ...Yes. Last year. I went to photograph the Little People's place in Treme and it just so happened that the Mardi Gras Indians were parading that day...but like I was saying, I think that the colorful historical tradition and...
‑ Jesus, man, stop it. See...you're making my point. You don't sound like a serious artist...you sound like a damn Whitney bank commercial. I've heard all this shit all my life...It's like the only thing people can say about New Orleans is...the food...the music...the culture...the architecture...Shit, it doesn't take an artist to say that, man, it takes a PR person. Look, all that stuff you've just said has been sold to you by the cultural hierarchy that controls this popular imagery of this city.
‑ What are you talking about?
‑ James, the reality is that New Orleans is sixty five per cent black...I'm not talking quadroon, mulatto, Creole black I'm talking contemporary African-American inner city urban pissed-off rap-singing race-based beaten-down held-down-by-the-white-man’s-power black...Now, New Orleans also has a rather substantial white population who are more than ever, much to their chagrin, feeling totally disaffected and alienated because of their perceived diminished power and numbers. In other words, most white people here just don't give a fuck about the city anymore, especially those white muthafuckers who’ve moved out to the suburbs in Metairie, Kenner, across the lake in Mandeville and shit, since they feel like the niggas now own it. So...the reality is that New Orleans is one of the poorest cities in the country and ranks number one in every pathetic social pathological category you can name...Number one in murder, teen‑pregnancy, political corruption, you name it, if it's bad, then we're number one at it. But the image of the city, the cultural image that is sold to the outside world by the white powers that be is one of a bunch of happy fat black trombone-playing jazz-swinging Dixieland-dancing buffoons serenading Stella while she swoons in the heat and humidity from her French Quarter balcony while below her Tennessee Williams propositions a quasi‑intellectual drag queen with a drink in his hand...And what I'm telling you is that all of this bullshit imagery is controlled a small cabal of white elitists who work in an incestuous conspiracy to control every cultural venue and system of recognition that exists here. Take a look at all the names involved in the media in New Orleans. The names that appear in all the magazines like Gambit, or City Business or the Times‑Picayune or the radio stations or the TV stations. It's fucking pathetic...Everybody is married to everybody. And these are the bastards that control what gets talked about on a daily basis about and in this city. And not one damn thing gets approved for air time or column space unless they check with their friends lovers and spouses with the competition. See, don't be stupid enough to even suggest that we have anything approaching a competition mode in the media here. These assholes I'm talking about make sure that every single cultural organization is on the same page of the hymn book. And the bottom line is, the result of all this conspiring among cultural arbiters here, is that the cultural artifacts of the city that are so quickly and easily appropriated by the artists and writers and others has absolutely no bearing whatsoever to the real lived experience of your average broke ass poor black man and woman in New Orleans who are lucky if they can rub two fucking plug nickels together to pay the fucking rent to the fucking white man who owns the run down 19th century shotgun shack they live in. New Orleans has to be the only city in the world whose rapid decay continues to produce something truly beautiful to behold...as far as certain cultural elitist assholes here are concerned.
‑ But...do any of these artifacts mean anything to you? Do you care about any of them?
‑ Yes...I do...and...no...I don't.
‑ What kind of answer is that, see, that's what I was saying earlier, Blake, you people down here will not give a straight answer...
‑ You people?
‑ Yes, come on, man, I didn’t mean you people, you black people, I meant you people, you native New Orleanians...you are a native, are you not?
‑ Let me ask you something, James.
‑ Alright.
‑ What if there were no Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Jazz Fest, or music clubs? What if all the famous restaurants didn't exist? What if there were no po‑boys or snow cones or Lucky Dogs? What if there were no French Quarter or above ground historic cemeteries? What if there was no street car rumbling down St. Charles Avenue? Imagine if none of those things existed...What would you find interesting about the city then?
‑ Well...I suppose...I...I...don't know...That's a good question...What's your point?
‑ My point is that everything we just hypothetically eliminated only makes up a very, very, very tiny part of the whole city. There's a hell of a lot more to New Orleans than those things...Things you have never seen...Will probably never see...Things that matter here that nobody talks about because nobody wants to buy it because nobody talks about it. You know what I mean? Look...you want to know about the real New Orleans? Then you should talk to my damn grandfather... He's a retired thirty five year veteran of the NOPD. Shit. He could tell you some damn things about this fucking city, man. Much better than I ever could. He could tell you things about New Orleans that you wouldn't believe. Things that would make your stomach turn. Some really cruel vicious evil shit that he saw others do...both cops and criminals...do all over New Orleans when he was on the force. He could tell you some nightmare stories that would blow every one of those stupid AAA travel guide myths of yours right out the goddamn door, James. But...well...if you want to be more intellectual and less visceral about it, then my point is that John Kennedy Toole wrote a book called 'A Confederacy of Dunces' that won the Pulitzer prize in 1980...and is widely accepted by the outside world as being the definitive Bible of reality about New Orleans.
‑ Yes, it's a tremendous book. I've read it three times. It's like everything he wrote was so true about this place. The claustrophobic suffocating stupidity and Ignatius's sanctimonious revolt against the dunces aligned against him.
‑ Very good, James, but do you know what the real reality of that book is?
‑ What?
‑ The real reality is that Toole wrote the damn book in the late sixties about his view of life here in the forties and fifties and the book wasn't even published until 1980...after he fucking committed suicide.
‑ And?
‑ And he committed suicide on the Gulf coast of Mississippi...Drove to Biloxi...ran a tube from his exhaust pipe to his car interior...and breathed himself to death.
‑ But what's your point?
‑ My point is that what drove Toole to suicide was not the fictional mythology of his book or even the fact that he struggled so long to have it published after endless rejections and repeated rewrites...The point is that he committed suicide because his creative fictional view of life in New Orleans finally...and tragically...intersected with the depressing reality of his real life...his personal life here...His existential reality won out over his fictional mythology...At the end of his book, Ignatius finally leaves New Orleans to go to New York...Toole couldn't do that though...He couldn't reconcile his life with reality here. But he didn't have the guts to leave New Orleans and try making it somewhere else either. And that's the horrible paradoxical tragedy of New Orleans, James. If you're not careful as an artist here, New Orleans...New Orleans will seduce you with its Hoodoo mysticism and its unique charms and lull you into a deep sleep and the next thing you know you'll awaken to the frightening sight of New Orleans couched on your chest sucking your breath out...just like that proverbial evil cat my memere' used to tell me about when I was a kid.
‑ What are you really trying to say to me? What do you really think of my photographs? You've seen them. I feel like you're trying to criticize me...or my art...but you're being so damn...so damn typically New Orleanian about it. You're being evasive. Just say it. Drop your native inclinations to talk bullshit around the subject and just spit it out.
‑ Alright...well...I think you're really going to have a hard time making it as an artist here, man...You might do better trying to sell your photographs on the fence behind the Cathedral in the French Quarter...You know which fence I'm talking about?...Not the tourist fence...you know...the one you're at now in front of the church...I'm talking about the one behind the church. I think your stuff would really do better over there...maybe.
‑ Sell it to the white trash parasites who are too drunk to stumble over to the main fence...is that what you're saying?
‑ No...I'm saying try to sell it to those fuckers...Some of them might actually buy some of your photos...if they've been drinking enough...Hey...here's a cool marketing idea for you...You could try telling the tourists that you're the bastard son of George Rodriguez. Maybe you could come up with a photographic icon to compete with his fucking Blue Dog...Hey...how about this one?...The purple cockroach...That's it...fuck...that's it...the fucking purple cockroach. You'll be fucking famous, man...and rich. You'll make Warhol look like a goddamn amateur.
‑ So, Blake, you don't think the locals will ever be interested in my art?
‑ Uh...no.
‑ So...what do the locals like, Blake? I value your...considered opinion...you know...as an intellectual artistically cognizant native son of this culturally vapid politically reactionary backwater third world banana republic...that I so apparently and painfully don't seem to understand.
‑ Well, James, the locals here tend to love Jazz Fest posters...especially the signed limited edition ones...They eat those goddamn things right up like free crawfish at a charity fundraiser boil.
- Fuck you, Blake.
- No, James. Fuck the myths, what about the real New Orleans?
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posted by The Right Reverend James W. Bailey at 8:30 AM
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