"Seventy-six trombones led the big parade with a hundred and ten cornets close at hand."
- The Music Man
The New Orleans Diary, Part III
I jotted this down very quickly that Wednesday afternoon.
I watched a small parade on Canal Street and felt a sadness at rituals that have lost their meaning and have become cheap tourist spectacles.
I came back to the hotel to take a nap, I think, then heard this loud music playing outside, which was impressive because I was on the 20th floor. I looked out our window (which was an awesome window, 4 feet across and tall from the floor to the ceiling) and I saw a parade coming down Canal Street. In front was the leader, someone in a flamboyant costume beating a tambourine, followed by a jazz band of trombones, trumpets and tubas. Behind them was a group of people handing out something, I think it was beads, I'm not sure. I think it was supposed to be a recreation of the traditional New Orleans funeral procession. They were playing that kind of music, and I saw them again the next day at the same time. I felt sick to watch it. The jazz funeral was something that at one time meant something. It was a ritual, it had purpose. It had meaning and feeling. And here it was recreated for the tourists, devoid of all meaning. Most of New Orleans is like that. All the special qualities that made New Orleans New Orleans have been commercialized. Like handing out beads. Supposed to be during Mardi Gras right? Not anymore. Every day of the year, because that is was the tourists want to see. Everything special there is sold off now. Voodoo shops, swamp tours, graveyards. All marketed to the public, and in the process lose that uniqueness and quality that made it special in the first place.
The cheap, the marketed, the sold disgust me. They are empty hollow shells of no more importance than a broken egg. And in a life devoid of meaning, to see acts and rituals that once had value cheapened, makes the cold world even more bleak.
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