Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? became an actual published hardcover book today. It is something that can be held in your hands, something with words and pages and pictures and all the things that made a book something that will last forever.
It even has an essay, "Listen to the Second Line," written by me.
Yes, by me.
I thought I would be crazy excited on the day I was publishing in a book for the very first time. I thought I would lose my mind just a little bit, go a little nuts, get a little giddy. I figured I deserved a few moments of fun insanity after years of wondering if I would ever be good enough. I thought I knew exactly how I would feel on a day like today, but I was so far off the mark for this book. Of course I couldn't have imagined that I would be writing about the music of New Orleans one day, or that it would be after the mother of all hurricanes took the city for the most vicious of twisted carnival rides. I couldn't know I would be part of this kind of project, that we would ever need to do this kind of project.
It just doesn't feel like a jumping up and down kind of celebration.
I am very proud to be part of this book, to be part of raising money for New Orleans, to be part of bringing attention to New Orleans. In the coming months I will be reviewing My New Orleans, New Orleans Mon Amour and the five volumes of The Neighborhood Story Project for the Voices of New Orleans site. (You can order anyone of the five books separately through Powells.) I am also hoping to get Soul Kitchen, the latest volume in Poppy Z. Brite's restaurant saga due out this summer, and I have a few emails out here and there looking for more information on other books that are set in or about New Orleans. (If you have any suggestions, let me know.) The goal is to write about books at the Voices of New Orleans site as other contributors write about the city and the people within it and the people who are trying to help it. The goal is to let the country know just what we all might miss if we let this city go.
Here's the weirdest thing I realized today - I have never been to New Orleans, but somehow, it has become the most significant city in my life.
Who would have thought this day would be like this? Whoever could have imagined it?
Notes - check out the latest issue of Speakeasy magazine for several great essays on NOLA; most of them available online.
