UN DEVOIR

Up on the wall of my office hangs an artwork in mixed-media, watercolor and ink, that depicts the cheerful majesty of jazz. Even with frame it only measures 24" x 32", but what draws attention to it despite its size is the catchy collaboration by and between the serenity of watercolor and the distinct confidence of pen and ink.

The piece itself is jazzy, like music with a discomfitured beat. The colors are a mixture of resplendence and calm but the continuous flow of inked outline gives the impression of movements by the artpiece's subjects, body movements like the thumping of feet and the snapping of fingers.

Making up the depiction are four figures - African-American musicians on the piano, trumpet, bass, and drums, respectively - that seem to portray the tapestry of life ordinaire in New Orleans - carefree and frantic, jaunty and soaring.

I bought the artpiece at a nondescript stall in Jax Brewery, right at the heart of New Orleans, when I went there in Spring of 2002. The price of the artpiece, like the food and ambiance and decadence of the city (in different degrees and meaning), is incredible: $6.00.

I remember asking the saleslady for the name of the artist, which I do every time I buy stuff of this kind anywhere, and she said nonchalantly, At $6.00 apiece I don't think the artist would want to be recognized. In that regard, the painting/drawing is an essential microcosm of New Orleans itself where nameless, faceless artists provide the flippancy of culture and allows for a practical traveler to enjoy the frisk and favor the rib of city life by indulging in a plethora of sweat, otherwise stated, by simply standing in the middle of human traffic.

For New Orleans brought mime to the level of street art. You go from one block to the other, say at Bourbon from Bienville to Conti, and you'll encounter two or three mimes on each side doing the thing they do best, standing still and mimicking a statue while being dangerously coated in layers of gold or silver paint, with one hand, palm up, holding a helmet or a plate for your appreciative notes or coins. You may penny-pinch, of course, and soon you'll realize the mime can move too, with the middle finger getting erect, the entire head moving sideways like an owl, with bulging eyes sizing you up, and you scream, Waaa, mommy, that monument is throwing me a birdy!

New Orleans not only teaches the valuable fact that good art can be cheap (or free), it also provides for a great lesson in travel: not everything that displeases the eye is bad. If in the Philippines we describe the fruit durian as "smells like hell and tastes like heaven", I consider gumbo as "looks like hell and tastes like heaven". In New Orleans, the credo can be, If it looks bad, eat it. Po' Boy or Crawfish look gross, but o boy, you'll crawl the earth for them once you've tried their flavorful best.

And from how I started, New Orleans is not all food or art, it is definitely music, too. Topping the venues for music, for sure, is Preservation Hall, a dingy warehouse-looking sonofagun that plays host to world-class jazz musicians. If you set foot there and play, the audience will not care less if Anne Rice happens to be one of them: they will have all ears for you and you alone, for PH is the house that, I should say, jazz built.

And you think New Orleans is all about Mardi Gras!

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The 7 plus signs above signify 7 crosses, 7 being a consensus lucky number, and a cross being an allusion to the logo of New Orleans Saints. I put them there probably for some luck, not just for the Saints, but for the entire city - which at the time I was there must have asked me, "My openness can be bizarre, my bizarreness is open, for why should the locals have all the fun?" - that is now lying, drowning, leaning, leaving...

This is my statement. The entry is written in present tense which may be logically, if not gramatically, wrong, but this is how I want to describe The Big Easy, forever here, forever now. This, then, is my appeal, to return New Orleans' favor of opening to us by opening ouselves to it this time, to its people, with our hearts, with our minds, with our wallets, and probably with our homes, too. One of the better projects around is delilah.com which serves as clearing house for commercial establishments wanting to be dropoff points for toys which will be picked-up by volunteer truckers at specified destinations that may form part of their routes.

We just have to do it.

S'il vous plait, as they would have said in the French Quarter.