SHIP / SHAPE Chronicle, Part 2
Today is Installation Day!
I wrote a justification of the installation, which i'll repost here--the URL of this blog (posts tagged "installation") is posted at the escuela, so anyone who wants to read more info can do so. The justification explains a lot of the inspiration and thought-process and symbology of the work. It even has citations and a bibliography.
Here it is:
The use of entirely salvaged media for the SHIP / SHAPE installation was of paramount concern. The resourcefulness of New Orleanians in developing survival means and tools cobbled from salvage recurred throughout our post-Katrina literature, but particularly in the first-hand oral history accounts of Voices Rising and Callaloo. The theme of salvage and making-do also relates directly to the age-old heritage of bricolaged Mardi Gras costumes and floats for the krewes, Indians, Zulus, etc. (Kuchta, 127-9).
A sculpture of a boat made from empty water vessels is constructed on the escuela roof, with a line connecting it to its “anchor,” a Cartesian Diver bottle. The size of the boat will be determined by the number of bottles ultimately collected by our collective UNO community this summer. The ship-shape pays homage to New Orleans’ shipbuilding history and echoes positive boat-stories—many survivors mention the importance of boats in surviving the flood (Nolan, 1253), the creation of makeshift boats (Ward, 1396), and rescuing survivors who were stranded. It also makes reference to the negative symbol of the stranded barge crushing part of Jourdan Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward, whose presence was chronicled in Adam Pelz’s recurring “Bargewatch” column for NOLAFugees.com (Longo and Lofstead).
The installation’s title references layers of meaning, from physical boats to the act of shipping items and people, taking aboard or sending abroad, shape as a silhouette, as a perimeter, as a state of being, and as an act of sculpting, molding, or otherwise forming order from chaos.
Primary elements of the installation:
1.) Water bottle boat-shaped structure
2.) Collected-story tenement flags
3.) Embraceable Cartesian Divers
4.) Numbers and statistics
5.) Community participation and the uncertainty principle
Significance of Water and Salvage
Water bottles are the primary medium of the installation, because water is perhaps the most significant yet accessible element to the very essence of New Orleans. New Orleans has always been a city of opposing symbols, fire and water. The incendiary nature of its politics, criminal element, climate, musical traditions, the volatility of its race relations and its palpable sexuality—pairs of opposites bound together.
Water and hydrocentric weather events loom over much of New Orleans literature, and water comprises 70% of the human body by mass. We can die from the lack of it, far quicker than we can of other necessities like food or shelter. New Orleans is seated within and surrounded by water, water looms over it as a force of potential and historical destruction at all times. And yet, when the city was flooded post-Katrina, water became a desperately needed commodity—safe, drinkable water was something people would break into stores and homes to find, literally being unable to live without it. Theron Bolds stresses over and over the challenges of obtaining potable water in his harrowing account of his Superdome experience, “More and More People but No Food” (Antoine, 25-39).
Here in Mexico, potable water is also a commodity, one we all are willing to pay for regularly. The empty bottles of our own water, water that has been consumed and served to hydrate every one of us in this program, combine in this installation to form a collective structure, a sculpture that is exposed to the elements—the water from the rains that deluge San Miguel de Allende. Our bottles—stacked, arranged, cut and reformed and made into a surface and vessel that both leaks and contains water—represent the UNO low-residency community/diaspora as well as the New Orleanians community (and post-Katrina diaspora), and indeed the national and global community as a whole.
The bottles are arranged in relation to one another, connected to one another without being permanently bonded to one another, in the shape of a ship—to disassemble the entire infrastructure of this vessel’s topography, one needs no special tools. Anyone can take these shapes apart into useless pieces of trash. The wind and rain can (and hopefully will) destroy parts of the installation during its three to five days of exposure to the elements.
The choice of location for the installation leads the viewer up to the rooftop of the school, as so many people were driven to their roofs escaping or attempting to escape the floodwaters of the many hurricanes that have struck the New Orleans area throughout history (Hand, 32). The escuela roof, however, unlike so many roofs in New Orleans, is open to the sky. This is a roof from which it is easy to have hope.
The use of water bottles exclusively was important—as opposed to soda or other bottles—and water bottles that I myself had used or others have given me, or ones collected in public establishments such as La Pamplonada from the general table trash. Only water bottles which had a direct connection to the artist were utilized—bottles that I or fellow students in the program were willing to save for the project. The number of bottles used and every individual bottle itself is then directly tied to the immediate community of the artist.
By coincidence and along brand-popularity lines, the labels generally sorted into two colors: orange and blue, the orange of Bonafont brand (on sale for a good price at many corner stores in San Miguel) and the blue of most all other brands. These labels are used to create streamers to festoon areas of the installation—“celebration garbage.” Blue and orange are complementary colors in the field of color theory, meaning that they are direct opposites on the color wheel, and can be used in differing combinations of intensity to create either jarring or pleasing effects.
The labels as a group element function within the context of the installation as a means by which the viewer can draw a parallel between the bottles and the residents of New Orleans. Initially, when the bottles were purchased by the students of the UNO summer program as water-containers, each bottle had an identity as a member of a product group that indicated its origin and history—Ciel brand water, or Santorini, or Bonafont, etc. The bottles began their “life” thus divided, just as New Orleanians historically have divided themselves along racial and ethnic lines—blacks, whites, Cajuns, Vietnamese, as well as numerous mixed-race identities (Codrescu, 1099). The process of preparing the bottles for use as installation media stripped them of their labels, literally, just as the Katrina disaster broke down boundaries between various populations within the city, and much like with some individuals who cling tightly to divisions in such circumstances, some of the bottles refused to give up their labels, the adhesive being too strong for them to release.
As much of the installation as possible is made from discarded objects, refuse, things that otherwise would be thrown away. The only parts of the installation that were not found/salvaged/repurposed are the string and paper used to construct the collected story tenement flags.
Collected Stories: Texts as Banners
The textual component is compiled from long-distance interviews with my circle of friends, colleagues, and family. It is clear that community and connection is vitally important to the people of New Orleans, and that the same time issues of distance and separation are paramount. Distance and separation exists within the city itself across socioeconomic and ethnic/racial lines, and also in reference to the distance and separation that was forced upon families, neighbors, and professional and cultural communities by the evacuation of the city amid the disaster of Katrina.
Our post-Katrina reading selections illuminated moments of instant community development and forged connection among survivors, as well as exploitation and separation. The common thread and refrain of impartiality echoed many times over—people “did what they had to”, what they felt they could, what they needed to. In Frederick Barton’s afterword to Voices Rising, “Breaches of Faith,” he tirelessly berates failures at every level of government while praising his fellow New Orleanians’ strength and community in just such terms. Over and over in the oral history transcripts, Katrina survivors such as Mr. Barton express both virulent anger directed at entities like the stratified levels of government and authority, and simultaneous complete forgiveness of individuals who acted in dysfunctional ways. (Antoine, 216-244)
All text responses incorporated into the installation come directly from the cited respondents in the form of comments on a travel-blog post and status updates on social media sites like Facebook in which I solicited input. I have retained all grammatical and spelling mistakes, in order to preserve the comments exactly without enforcing an editorial hand. A central theme running throughout the reading selections that centered on oral histories and collective experience was the vital need to maintain original voices rather than impose editorial judgments, even as “minimal” as copy-editing for punctuation or capitalization errors.
Strung up like rlung ta, Tibetan prayer flags; like papel picado, Mexican cut paper banners; like parade banners and tenement laundry; the text responses hang in carnival banner swags aroumd the installation space. Rlung ta is translated as “Wind Horse,” a Tibetan allegory that symbolizes the concept of good fortune. Papel picado are displayed for celebrations, from Christmas and Easter to the Day of the Dead, encompassing birth, death, and resurrection. Celebrations are such an intrinsic element of New Orleans culture that a visual connection felt vital to the effectiveness of the installation.
Cartesian Divers/Cartesian Devils
The Cartesian Diver vessel is named for Rene Descartes, and demonstrates scientific principles of buoyancy. The Cartesian Diver “anchor” roots the installation in the courtyard of the escuela; it represents the core survival and tenacity of the city itself and many of its residents. In Cartesian Diver structures, the divers are never unsubmerged in their watery chamber, just as New Orleans is never a city above sea level. Application of pressure makes the divers plunge to the bottom of their bottles, but they always return to the top when the pressure is released. Pressure can be applied aggressively, with squeezing hands in a "choking" gesture, or comfortingly, by "hugging" the bottles. This represents the nuanced dichotomy of New Orleans as a city of sin and salvation, and the need for both care and forcefulness in rebuilding, and echoes the “Katrina Hug” phenomenon (Shaik, 1484). The Cartesian Diver device serves as the anchor for the ship-shaped sculptural element. (This portion of the installation is contingent upon my finding suitable materials to create the diver.)
Numbers and statistics
Any disaster can be reduced to mere statistics. We fall back on statistics and enumerations as a means for attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible, judging distances in perspectives such as the length of a football field, or explaining massive weights in terms of the equivalent number of semi trucks. As a representation of this tendency, I have broken down the entire installation into a few easily comprehended numbers.
The following brands of water were used in the following quantities:
Agua Cryspura: 1
Bonafont: 37
Ciel: 41
e-pura: 1
H2Go: 8
H2-Oh!: 1
Isseg: 2
Nestlé: 1
Peñafiel: 3
Pureza Aga: 1
Santorini: 4
Skarch: 5
Commercially rebranded:
Abuelo Agustin: 1
La Biblioteca: 1
Limerick Pub: 1
Ten Ten Pie: 1
* figures current as of 7/19/10
These figures are approximated from a best-estimate, based on my sense of how many of each, educated guesses looking at the ratio of salvaged label and cap types, and utter guesses. This means of statistics collection corresponds to the manner in which NOLA-related statistics were compiled about Katrina—numbers of deaths and injuries fluctuate wildly, depending upon who stated them and when. As we noted in discussion, incorrect death-toll statistics are present even within the texts from the course reading list (Antoine, 216-244).
According to Ralph Adamo in his Big Bridge essay, “Meditation on New Orleans,” more than 480 billion gallons of water covered most of the city. In comparison, this installation features containers that formerly held 45 gallons of water (estimation will increase by the date of installation so final figures will change). I would need to remake this installation ten billion times to use the equivalent of the post-Katrina flood worth of water-vessels. Such statistical deployment remains incomprehensible.
These figures are posted throughout the installation as a constant reminder of how easily reducible anything is to a set of statistics, yet doing so adds no appreciable comprehension of an event which is, essentially, incomprehensibly complex.
Community Participation and the Uncertainty Principle
The uncertainty and immediacy of the project is in and of itself an important aspect of the project. New Orleanians—as evidenced in our readings—are masters of “flying by the seat of the pants,” exhibiting amazing resourcefulness, adaptability, and both resignation and triumph in the face of challenges. When I have been asked by my fellow students, “What is the installation going to look like,” I’ve consistently responded, “I don’t know.” (I only realized I was building a boat in the third week of the process.)
The finished dimensions of the ship-shape will ultimately be contingent upon so many factors outside my control that there’s no point in prior speculation. How many bottles will I have? How much space can they be made to take up? Will there be enough to attempt some complex structures, or will I be limited by a lack of resources? Will I be sick that weekend from a salad washed in dirty water, and be forced to compromise on the quantity or quality of labor? Will it rain while I’m working? What if I’m struck by lightning on the roof of the school?
[ETA: So far, no stomach flu, but it will probably rain today. And i have A LOT of bottles.]
I’m in a microcosm of the position of any New Orleanian, when asked, “What if the Big One comes? What if the city floods? What if the fishing/shrimping/oyster industry never comes back from the oil spill?”
One simply cannot plan for such a thing. There are too many variables to even make an educated guess. One has to rely upon faith, whether that be faith in a greater power to guide you in a time of need, or faith in your own ability to adapt and innovate. You’ll do the best you can with whatever you’ve got, whenever it happens. For now, why worry?
Laissez le bon temps roulez.
Works Cited
Adamo, Ralph. “Meditation on New Orleans.” Big Bridge #14: Crescent City Sturm und Drang. Brinks, Dave and Bill Lavender, eds. Web. 16 July 2010.
Antoine, Rebeca, ed. Voices Rising: Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2008. Print.
Brinks, Dave and Bill Lavender, eds. Big Bridge #14: Crescent City Sturm und Drang. Web. 16 July 2010.
Codrescu, Andrei. “New Orleans: A Lecture.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1098-1102. Web. 17 July 2010.
Hand, Simon. “In Patience to Abide.” Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. 27-33. Print.
Kuchta, Jen. “The Peasants are Revolting.” Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. 127-129. Print.
Longo, Joe and Jarret Lofstead, eds. Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. Print.
Nolan, James. “Acts of God.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1253. Web. 17 July 2010.
Pollock, Rachel E. “Please help with my installation!” San Miguel – Summer 2010. Blogspot, 8 July 2010. Web. 18 July 2010.
Shaik, Fatima. “Christmas in New Orleans.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1484-1485. Web. 17 July 2010.
Ward, Jr., Jerry W. Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1395-1399. Web. 17 July 2010.
I wrote a justification of the installation, which i'll repost here--the URL of this blog (posts tagged "installation") is posted at the escuela, so anyone who wants to read more info can do so. The justification explains a lot of the inspiration and thought-process and symbology of the work. It even has citations and a bibliography.
Here it is:
The use of entirely salvaged media for the SHIP / SHAPE installation was of paramount concern. The resourcefulness of New Orleanians in developing survival means and tools cobbled from salvage recurred throughout our post-Katrina literature, but particularly in the first-hand oral history accounts of Voices Rising and Callaloo. The theme of salvage and making-do also relates directly to the age-old heritage of bricolaged Mardi Gras costumes and floats for the krewes, Indians, Zulus, etc. (Kuchta, 127-9).
A sculpture of a boat made from empty water vessels is constructed on the escuela roof, with a line connecting it to its “anchor,” a Cartesian Diver bottle. The size of the boat will be determined by the number of bottles ultimately collected by our collective UNO community this summer. The ship-shape pays homage to New Orleans’ shipbuilding history and echoes positive boat-stories—many survivors mention the importance of boats in surviving the flood (Nolan, 1253), the creation of makeshift boats (Ward, 1396), and rescuing survivors who were stranded. It also makes reference to the negative symbol of the stranded barge crushing part of Jourdan Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward, whose presence was chronicled in Adam Pelz’s recurring “Bargewatch” column for NOLAFugees.com (Longo and Lofstead).
The installation’s title references layers of meaning, from physical boats to the act of shipping items and people, taking aboard or sending abroad, shape as a silhouette, as a perimeter, as a state of being, and as an act of sculpting, molding, or otherwise forming order from chaos.
Primary elements of the installation:
1.) Water bottle boat-shaped structure
2.) Collected-story tenement flags
3.) Embraceable Cartesian Divers
4.) Numbers and statistics
5.) Community participation and the uncertainty principle
Significance of Water and Salvage
Water bottles are the primary medium of the installation, because water is perhaps the most significant yet accessible element to the very essence of New Orleans. New Orleans has always been a city of opposing symbols, fire and water. The incendiary nature of its politics, criminal element, climate, musical traditions, the volatility of its race relations and its palpable sexuality—pairs of opposites bound together.
Water and hydrocentric weather events loom over much of New Orleans literature, and water comprises 70% of the human body by mass. We can die from the lack of it, far quicker than we can of other necessities like food or shelter. New Orleans is seated within and surrounded by water, water looms over it as a force of potential and historical destruction at all times. And yet, when the city was flooded post-Katrina, water became a desperately needed commodity—safe, drinkable water was something people would break into stores and homes to find, literally being unable to live without it. Theron Bolds stresses over and over the challenges of obtaining potable water in his harrowing account of his Superdome experience, “More and More People but No Food” (Antoine, 25-39).
Here in Mexico, potable water is also a commodity, one we all are willing to pay for regularly. The empty bottles of our own water, water that has been consumed and served to hydrate every one of us in this program, combine in this installation to form a collective structure, a sculpture that is exposed to the elements—the water from the rains that deluge San Miguel de Allende. Our bottles—stacked, arranged, cut and reformed and made into a surface and vessel that both leaks and contains water—represent the UNO low-residency community/diaspora as well as the New Orleanians community (and post-Katrina diaspora), and indeed the national and global community as a whole.
The bottles are arranged in relation to one another, connected to one another without being permanently bonded to one another, in the shape of a ship—to disassemble the entire infrastructure of this vessel’s topography, one needs no special tools. Anyone can take these shapes apart into useless pieces of trash. The wind and rain can (and hopefully will) destroy parts of the installation during its three to five days of exposure to the elements.
The choice of location for the installation leads the viewer up to the rooftop of the school, as so many people were driven to their roofs escaping or attempting to escape the floodwaters of the many hurricanes that have struck the New Orleans area throughout history (Hand, 32). The escuela roof, however, unlike so many roofs in New Orleans, is open to the sky. This is a roof from which it is easy to have hope.
The use of water bottles exclusively was important—as opposed to soda or other bottles—and water bottles that I myself had used or others have given me, or ones collected in public establishments such as La Pamplonada from the general table trash. Only water bottles which had a direct connection to the artist were utilized—bottles that I or fellow students in the program were willing to save for the project. The number of bottles used and every individual bottle itself is then directly tied to the immediate community of the artist.
By coincidence and along brand-popularity lines, the labels generally sorted into two colors: orange and blue, the orange of Bonafont brand (on sale for a good price at many corner stores in San Miguel) and the blue of most all other brands. These labels are used to create streamers to festoon areas of the installation—“celebration garbage.” Blue and orange are complementary colors in the field of color theory, meaning that they are direct opposites on the color wheel, and can be used in differing combinations of intensity to create either jarring or pleasing effects.
The labels as a group element function within the context of the installation as a means by which the viewer can draw a parallel between the bottles and the residents of New Orleans. Initially, when the bottles were purchased by the students of the UNO summer program as water-containers, each bottle had an identity as a member of a product group that indicated its origin and history—Ciel brand water, or Santorini, or Bonafont, etc. The bottles began their “life” thus divided, just as New Orleanians historically have divided themselves along racial and ethnic lines—blacks, whites, Cajuns, Vietnamese, as well as numerous mixed-race identities (Codrescu, 1099). The process of preparing the bottles for use as installation media stripped them of their labels, literally, just as the Katrina disaster broke down boundaries between various populations within the city, and much like with some individuals who cling tightly to divisions in such circumstances, some of the bottles refused to give up their labels, the adhesive being too strong for them to release.
As much of the installation as possible is made from discarded objects, refuse, things that otherwise would be thrown away. The only parts of the installation that were not found/salvaged/repurposed are the string and paper used to construct the collected story tenement flags.
Collected Stories: Texts as Banners
The textual component is compiled from long-distance interviews with my circle of friends, colleagues, and family. It is clear that community and connection is vitally important to the people of New Orleans, and that the same time issues of distance and separation are paramount. Distance and separation exists within the city itself across socioeconomic and ethnic/racial lines, and also in reference to the distance and separation that was forced upon families, neighbors, and professional and cultural communities by the evacuation of the city amid the disaster of Katrina.
Our post-Katrina reading selections illuminated moments of instant community development and forged connection among survivors, as well as exploitation and separation. The common thread and refrain of impartiality echoed many times over—people “did what they had to”, what they felt they could, what they needed to. In Frederick Barton’s afterword to Voices Rising, “Breaches of Faith,” he tirelessly berates failures at every level of government while praising his fellow New Orleanians’ strength and community in just such terms. Over and over in the oral history transcripts, Katrina survivors such as Mr. Barton express both virulent anger directed at entities like the stratified levels of government and authority, and simultaneous complete forgiveness of individuals who acted in dysfunctional ways. (Antoine, 216-244)
All text responses incorporated into the installation come directly from the cited respondents in the form of comments on a travel-blog post and status updates on social media sites like Facebook in which I solicited input. I have retained all grammatical and spelling mistakes, in order to preserve the comments exactly without enforcing an editorial hand. A central theme running throughout the reading selections that centered on oral histories and collective experience was the vital need to maintain original voices rather than impose editorial judgments, even as “minimal” as copy-editing for punctuation or capitalization errors.
Strung up like rlung ta, Tibetan prayer flags; like papel picado, Mexican cut paper banners; like parade banners and tenement laundry; the text responses hang in carnival banner swags aroumd the installation space. Rlung ta is translated as “Wind Horse,” a Tibetan allegory that symbolizes the concept of good fortune. Papel picado are displayed for celebrations, from Christmas and Easter to the Day of the Dead, encompassing birth, death, and resurrection. Celebrations are such an intrinsic element of New Orleans culture that a visual connection felt vital to the effectiveness of the installation.
Cartesian Divers/Cartesian Devils
The Cartesian Diver vessel is named for Rene Descartes, and demonstrates scientific principles of buoyancy. The Cartesian Diver “anchor” roots the installation in the courtyard of the escuela; it represents the core survival and tenacity of the city itself and many of its residents. In Cartesian Diver structures, the divers are never unsubmerged in their watery chamber, just as New Orleans is never a city above sea level. Application of pressure makes the divers plunge to the bottom of their bottles, but they always return to the top when the pressure is released. Pressure can be applied aggressively, with squeezing hands in a "choking" gesture, or comfortingly, by "hugging" the bottles. This represents the nuanced dichotomy of New Orleans as a city of sin and salvation, and the need for both care and forcefulness in rebuilding, and echoes the “Katrina Hug” phenomenon (Shaik, 1484). The Cartesian Diver device serves as the anchor for the ship-shaped sculptural element. (This portion of the installation is contingent upon my finding suitable materials to create the diver.)
Numbers and statistics
Any disaster can be reduced to mere statistics. We fall back on statistics and enumerations as a means for attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible, judging distances in perspectives such as the length of a football field, or explaining massive weights in terms of the equivalent number of semi trucks. As a representation of this tendency, I have broken down the entire installation into a few easily comprehended numbers.
The following brands of water were used in the following quantities:
Agua Cryspura: 1
Bonafont: 37
Ciel: 41
e-pura: 1
H2Go: 8
H2-Oh!: 1
Isseg: 2
Nestlé: 1
Peñafiel: 3
Pureza Aga: 1
Santorini: 4
Skarch: 5
Commercially rebranded:
Abuelo Agustin: 1
La Biblioteca: 1
Limerick Pub: 1
Ten Ten Pie: 1
* figures current as of 7/19/10
These figures are approximated from a best-estimate, based on my sense of how many of each, educated guesses looking at the ratio of salvaged label and cap types, and utter guesses. This means of statistics collection corresponds to the manner in which NOLA-related statistics were compiled about Katrina—numbers of deaths and injuries fluctuate wildly, depending upon who stated them and when. As we noted in discussion, incorrect death-toll statistics are present even within the texts from the course reading list (Antoine, 216-244).
According to Ralph Adamo in his Big Bridge essay, “Meditation on New Orleans,” more than 480 billion gallons of water covered most of the city. In comparison, this installation features containers that formerly held 45 gallons of water (estimation will increase by the date of installation so final figures will change). I would need to remake this installation ten billion times to use the equivalent of the post-Katrina flood worth of water-vessels. Such statistical deployment remains incomprehensible.
These figures are posted throughout the installation as a constant reminder of how easily reducible anything is to a set of statistics, yet doing so adds no appreciable comprehension of an event which is, essentially, incomprehensibly complex.
Community Participation and the Uncertainty Principle
The uncertainty and immediacy of the project is in and of itself an important aspect of the project. New Orleanians—as evidenced in our readings—are masters of “flying by the seat of the pants,” exhibiting amazing resourcefulness, adaptability, and both resignation and triumph in the face of challenges. When I have been asked by my fellow students, “What is the installation going to look like,” I’ve consistently responded, “I don’t know.” (I only realized I was building a boat in the third week of the process.)
The finished dimensions of the ship-shape will ultimately be contingent upon so many factors outside my control that there’s no point in prior speculation. How many bottles will I have? How much space can they be made to take up? Will there be enough to attempt some complex structures, or will I be limited by a lack of resources? Will I be sick that weekend from a salad washed in dirty water, and be forced to compromise on the quantity or quality of labor? Will it rain while I’m working? What if I’m struck by lightning on the roof of the school?
[ETA: So far, no stomach flu, but it will probably rain today. And i have A LOT of bottles.]
I’m in a microcosm of the position of any New Orleanian, when asked, “What if the Big One comes? What if the city floods? What if the fishing/shrimping/oyster industry never comes back from the oil spill?”
One simply cannot plan for such a thing. There are too many variables to even make an educated guess. One has to rely upon faith, whether that be faith in a greater power to guide you in a time of need, or faith in your own ability to adapt and innovate. You’ll do the best you can with whatever you’ve got, whenever it happens. For now, why worry?
Laissez le bon temps roulez.
Works Cited
Adamo, Ralph. “Meditation on New Orleans.” Big Bridge #14: Crescent City Sturm und Drang. Brinks, Dave and Bill Lavender, eds. Web. 16 July 2010.
Antoine, Rebeca, ed. Voices Rising: Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2008. Print.
Brinks, Dave and Bill Lavender, eds. Big Bridge #14: Crescent City Sturm und Drang. Web. 16 July 2010.
Codrescu, Andrei. “New Orleans: A Lecture.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1098-1102. Web. 17 July 2010.
Hand, Simon. “In Patience to Abide.” Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. 27-33. Print.
Kuchta, Jen. “The Peasants are Revolting.” Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. 127-129. Print.
Longo, Joe and Jarret Lofstead, eds. Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. Print.
Nolan, James. “Acts of God.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1253. Web. 17 July 2010.
Pollock, Rachel E. “Please help with my installation!” San Miguel – Summer 2010. Blogspot, 8 July 2010. Web. 18 July 2010.
Shaik, Fatima. “Christmas in New Orleans.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1484-1485. Web. 17 July 2010.
Ward, Jr., Jerry W. Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1395-1399. Web. 17 July 2010.
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