Happiness is the journey
The yoga message is about happiness and how it is not a thing to be gotten but the getting that is happiness. So true. But the example used was Americans vs Europeans – how Americans are all about buying things they think will give them comfort (television, cars, vacation packages) while Europeans are all about pleasures to be had (sharing a meal with friends, going to hear music, watching a cultural event). I know my European partner is all about pleasure and she loves going back home where in Zagreb people take time out of their busy lives to share a beer or a coffee, or simply sit in a square. Here she’s always trying to grab me as I’m running through the house. Hey, I’m on a journey!
So when I was headed to yoga, down Orleans Avenue where the street has been ripped up for over a year now, and the projects that had been torn down are still under heavy construction with some not bad looking housing, and the rest looks blighted, I saw Evan Christopher and Tom McDermott mugging for a camera shot in front of John and Mary Food Store. They have a new CD coming out, which must have prompted the photograph.
Coming across WWOZ’s airwaves was Eric Lindell singing I’m a Lucky Man.
Orleans Avenue is a contradiction – sometimes I imagine inheriting a zillion dollars and fixing all the houses up, and sometimes I cannot imagine wanting to drive down that street if it were all fixed up. Why is that? What is it about the broken side of New Orleans’ charm that makes me feel good, home, happy? Most people would consider it a blight if they drove down Orleans Avenue – they would think to themselves who lives here for godsakes? And yet I know people who live there, Leah Chase has her restaurant on Orleans, the Mardi Gras Indians march down Orleans for Super Sunday.
Coming out of yoga, I saw Luke Winslow King, my favorite new musician and I told him, “Hey, you’re my favorite new musician,” and he said, “Hey, thanks!” and if Tin were around he would have said, “Heys for Horses” since he hears it so much around here. But hey, what a life huh – in just a few miles I saw three super talented musicians – and that’s New Orleans and Orleans Avenue will always be a mix of this and that, but isn’t that what OM means, this and that?