Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2006 - (Page 23) can't remember — it might have been Larry Bannock of the Golden Star Hunters. In any case here he was, in mufti. I don’t remember what he drank or what I drank; I just remember chatting with him for a while about this and that. When he asked me what kind of work I did, I told him that I wrote books, and magazine articles. He asked me what kind, and I told him that I wrote fiction and nonfiction, a lot about music. I asked him if he liked to read and he told me he did; when I asked him what he liked to read he said, “Mainly philosophy, and some fiction. I have an extensive library of books on philosophy and African American history as well.” By that time in my life I had had enough experience with a wide range of American culture not to be surprised to come across things that weren’t what they seemed on the surface, yet this surprised me. I thought I knew what and who the Mardi Gras Indians were; despite everything I knew, or thought I knew, about the way things worked in this culture, I was surprised to hear this man — whom I had seen dressed in elaborate Indian regalia, plumes and feathers sprouting, chanting African-based rhythms over tambourine background — say that he read philosophy. To my shame, I had a moment of skepticism that lay beneath my next question, which was, “Which philosophers do you like to read?” “Lately,” he said, “mainly Bertrand Russell. But I love Nietzsche too.” It is an old American situation, of course — anyone interested in an extended essay on the subject should read Ralph Ellison’s “The Little Man at Chehaw Station,” in his collection Going to the Territory, or Constance Rourke’s American Humor, both extended meditations on the masks not just that we put on for others but that we put on others, the surprises that lurk so often around the corners of someone’s seemingly straightforward identity. It is a lesson that one has to learn continually in New Orleans. Things are always more complex than they seem. This is true of any city, but in New Orleans it has its special flavors, as does everything in the Crescent City. I probably could have learned it elsewhere, but I would have learned it more slowly, and it wouldn't have been as much fun. LCV Excerpted, with permission, from Why New Orleans Matters, copyright 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers (www.harpercollins.com). The book won the 2006 Humanities Book of the Year Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Tom Piazza, a longtime New Orleans resident, is the author of seven previous works of fiction and nonfiction, including My Cold War and the recent Understanding Jazz. Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew Spring 2006/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 23 http://www.harpercollins.com http://www.harpercollins.com
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