Once I went to New Orleans for a PCA/ACA conference. I had last been as a child on an extended family vacation. By that I mean, my extended family on my mother's side all went across the Ponchatrain together into La Plus Belle, country bumpkin Methodist Hicks strolling about the cobblestone of the Bourbon District with our mouths dragging between our feet. My grandmother was still alive, so I was about 7. This time around, however, I was worldly enough to search out my cup of something to help me stumble through the Big Easy professionally.
PCA/ACA is divided into a multitude of subgroups, so I cannot tell you the theme of the conference, only that I went as a presenter in the "Conspiracy" section. I presented on Blackness as a conspiracy...to about 5 people, including my two friends who had talked me into going in the first place. It was high metrosexual our little clatch, but I did not get that at all, though my boyfriend who stayed behind in Venice, CA intrinsically understood that he was sending me off to facilitate a male to male love affair. But that turned out to not be the case. La Plus Belle had something else in mind for the descendants of her pale suitors.
The City itself as we have come to understand it in post-puritanical, post-mercantile, post-labor United States can only become itself through the performance of Blackness and the daily performances rendered by black body of the surplus value sort, and the mistakenly labeled superfluous. Blackness is the primary condition of the modern city, especially in ports of call. We could linger in the architecture, but really, what those buildings represent are needs to contain and obscure labor, value, and resultant surplus value (often to create more surplus value in its mystification). I am talking of Marx, thinking of Derrida, but really holding the hands of CLR James and Marcus Mosiah Garvey (perhaps even Sterling Stuckey). Ghosting through this thought are older, powder-wigged men. And this all disturbs me, because the true lineage of La PLus Belle is a Matriarchy, but as those mulatta women were to have left no trace, I can only speak of tombs like beads on an abacus. The tomb of Maria Laveau herself is a hatched over counter of Spells, temporal shifts and seductions that mark a particular capital formation called the slave port like a branding iron on the back of a slave.
We were getting along with the natives, spending our money like water in exchange for bellies of fire. One of my crew, a former bartender, insisted that there was one drink which I absolutely must have. The three of us fell into one of those closet bars on Bourbon Street, the kind where you half expect to have a Harry Potter experience and end up in 16th century New Orleans as soon as you cross its threshold. Having survived that bit of "pre-nostalgia" (what should we call this desire for objects to push us against the flow of time that has been embedded in our memory banks by the consumption of media), we squeezed into the pale blue wooden frame to be greeted by a honey colored woman with braids dyed blond, wearing a denim dress, snap buttons threatening to stab us in the eye, and at least three pair of gold hoop earrings with additional gold studs. Her fingers were also weighted with gold bands and knots, and were it sometime in 1988, she likely would've had on dookey gold chains as we used to call them, but instead, she sported several very thin charmed gold neclaces. She had a great wicked smile as she looked me directly in my eye. Playing my part, I wore my hair in twists, caught up in a queenly knot on the front and cascading down the back with freshwater pearls in my ears and around my neck. A large silver bracelet engulfed my wrist, embedded with various precious stones on its ends and in its wrought middle--a gift to myself after completing my dissertation. I had on a rose print tea dress, a magenta cashmere throw from India over my shoulders and a very subtle hand made perfume behind my ears called Côte D'Ivoire.
Here, the faint giggle of Mami Wata could be heard in the creakings of the board as our weight shifted while we mulatta-types took each other in, each one of us clearly red bones anyway, but with the features of a mulatta, so we worked our surplus value as best we could, which was under excellent conditions given the night sky and the tendency for red bone skin to shimmer in low light where the improperly made-up mulatta looks sickly. Oshun of the Denim asked me what I wanted. Ever the drunk gentleman, my friend stepped in and ordered for me. It was the cobblestone. Finally the cupboard had switched into gear, and soon we would be traipsing along the quay, arm in arm, me shoeless but in fine French silks, he in a long coat, Persian Vest, and jodhpurs. This scene would have been disintegrating, but La Plus Belle, NOLA, has a certain way about her when it comes to white young men with cash.
"Goldschlager. Do you have that?"
"Oh yes. That's perfect for her. I do have that."
Then Oshun of the Denim turned, found the large antiquarian looking bottle wihich made me think of Mary Shelley and her madmen (my boarding school education has its way with me all the time). She obviously wanted to give me a very ornate shot glass, but the rule was, plastic plastic plastic plastic only to be carried down the streets. It was newish at the time and she did not like it. Apologetically she poured a bit of the liquor into a clear pixie cup and said, "Taste it. You're gonna like it."
Honey and cinnamon with hints of orange floral aromas wafted around my palette. Instantly I understood that this was the necessary offering to the necessary Saints necessarily along for the ride in the bosom of La PLus Belle. I almost cried with delight. "Yes please! This is perfect!" I felt a piece of the gold leaf stamping memory if its passing on my tongue. Goldschlager for Oshun of the Tears, where Oya and Oshun meet as one to be none other than a Mami Wata, who of course is always plural, but always, always where the citified action is springing forth from the buttocks and hips of black beauties the world over.
My escorts, after a bit of wrangling over who should pay for my drinks, then placed their own orders. They were getting spooked, as white boys often do when playing the part lain before them by the unerring strength of Vodou, Candomblé, Hoodoo or whatever other African descended civilizing socio-religious practice happened to be the strongest in their local environs, so they made haste to thank Oshun of the Denim and get out of the sweltering blue box. Just after they turned, she got this amazing glint in her eye, turned her head to one side in that sexy python way, leaned over the bar and whispered into my face, "You go , girl!"
I blushed so hard that it was difficult to play innocent. I was always put out when discovered to be trading and trafficking in the old almagamation of skin, hair, nose and limbs. I'm educated, why would I need to do that? I could say instinct, but that would so ridiculously silly that even I would want to smack myself. Instead, I went for a coy look as I backed out of her Voudu Machine and winked at her, one escort already checking to see if I was okay with my drink. I was fabulous, but now my hips required music and my lips a cigar, if we were going to get the offering to NOLA correct. It was not the first time that I got plucked out of the space-time continuum to make good with the gods. I knew how it went.
Nothing is worse than a bunch of academics who know a little bit of history, a whole lot of post modern theory and who are tipsy. Not inebriated, but tipsy, the two-headed doctor status revealing itself, charged with discourse spouting out of their faces as if they actually remembered when the stones were lain, who had owned what shops, how many slaves, where the tea house was, coffee shop, best roasted chickory...we were damn near stumbling now, having collected more conference goers into our orbit, but they all sensed that we not only knew where the party was, but that we were The Party itself, a walking bembe for all the river goddesses.
Decerteau's perambulating flanêur walked among us several times, teaching us how to get about since the street signs were not illuminated nor were the streets lain out rationally like a Chicago or a New York. These were streets for artists posing as city planners: radii and circumfernces abounded, giving the Goldschlager a run for its money, occasionally pouring out into a glorious "Ooooh!" as we stumbled into a roundabout. One escort exclaimed, "I would drown here!" The River had rushed him a bit and he was too tipsy to swim. He knew himself to be going down, yet continued to spout on about Spinoza or Zizeck or Foucault. We joked about discipline, disciplines, disciplinary action and kept meandering directly towards our task at hand: music.
Not canned stuff. We could get that home or in our car. We wanted, required unadulterated LIVE music played by citizens of La Plus Belle in that way that only her children can. A jazz combo was located. The place duly noted as not quite the place for them, stuffed as it was by flabby white tourists who sat dumb as a door knob, staring into the sweating performers faces as if they were watching television. Something had to be done!
Our colleague from Australia was mollified at this dignified yet highly inappropriate behavior of her racemates. "What the hell is wrong with them? Are they deef?" By that point, my hips had totally been given over to the Night. The drummer had spotted me. As a superbly fat frog of a man, he was no less a drummer, so he knew when his dancer had shown up. Drummers and dancers. This one is tricky to explain, but we collect each other "in the tradition" because really the drumming should not be separate from the dancing. Since we are trained that way in the US, disciplined as it were so that certain unruly sites like the one that was about to take place would not occur, we drummers and dancers always find each other, try each other out, looking for the rest of our phrase. Depending on who has what knowledge, ownership is assigned.
A dance teacher will refer to "my drummer" if she is specifically training the cat to do her bidding, reworking the millennia old beats to fit her limbs and pulse. In other moments, if she or he for that matter, is utilizing the services of a full ensemble, she will say "the drummers," for they being a roving band of mad men, belong to the lead drummer who harnesses their energy for the duration of the class, decides how much they will get paid, whether or not they will get to take a solo, who will play which part, etc. In essence, a drum ensemble like that one pulls in more dancers, because they are wild and unclaimed. It is sound economic sense, but makes for a haphazard class, since there is no way to do anything other than just dance.
But then there are moments when the drummer possesses all the cards. And that night in NOLA I was beholden to The Drummer. He knew it. Big daddy played break beats for tendons buried deep in my pelvic girdle. He slapped the cymbal for pieces of vertebrae that had almost become fused from too much computer gazing. He brushed on the snares head to set my Medicine Hair free and wild in the Wind. And then he told me, after he had judged that I had enough to go round, to give the sax player some.
By this point, the owner had began to recognize that the music had shifted significantly, was being completed somewhere off stage, and this was not to be tolerated. As I dipped and gave the sax player some of what I learned form dancing with Steve Coleman and the Five Elements, the owner swooped in to try and stop New Orleans from saving her children who were trapped on that stage, making valued sounds in an alienating environment. YeYe had sent my hips, and my courtesans, to the rescue.
"No dancing on my sidewalk in the doorways!"
"What?! This is New Orleans. This is what it's for."
"No, you will stop."
"No I won't. I'm on the sidewalk, a public space, and I can do as I please. I'm not bothering anyone."
Courtesan to owner:"Well, do you have food? We're hungry anyway, so we'll come in, and give you some money for our good time."
"NO, not for you."
"What?! I just offered to eat drink and be merry in your place and PAY FOR IT. That's how this thing works."
By this point, the four of us are standing in the place, desperate to right a wrong that was much older than any of us. While I had been giving the drummer some, giving the sax player some, enticing the singer to sing about me rather than recite an old standard, the audience had become aware that the show was engulfing them. All that head swiveling was no doubt causing them great pain, seeing as they were the sort who liked to be presented with what they should look at, not forced to find it, so the owner, who was an insane control freak (hence the type of clientelle he sought and cultivated) had flown into a snit and was trying to get the niggers on the stage to stop being so, well niggerish, and actual follow his scripted version of Authentic New Orleans Jazz which had to look just like it sounded on Smithsonian recordings: ie, have no visible dancing bodies. Everyone knew that you don't dance to jazz.
"No you can't sit down and you need to get out."
The Aussie:" Well isn't that illegal? We've got money to pay and we are not tearing up your place.
"No, get out!"
Courtesan 2 "OH my go, this is so fucked! How can he have those guys up there and not let people dance?"
Me: "I don't know. I hope he pays well"
Courtesan 1: "Fuck it. We're out of here. (then louder with big white man gestures, otherwise known as a curse) You blew it pal. You're not gonna last another month behaving like this. You just watch."
And we were back out on the sidewalk. The musicians had seen all of it and knew the deal. In fact, they had been getting lourder and louder as our dispute raged on. I went back to doing what I knew how to do, a parting gift for my brethren whose freedom I could not buy. A shimmy here, a rump thrust there, an inching up of the skirt and...that fool owner, in the summer heat of the South, began to close the giant wood doors on our face, for by now, there was a crowd dancing with us on the corner as we told them not to go into the place and what the owner was conspiring to do to NOLA. We blew kisses to each other, me and my drum daddy, as the owner struggled to close the door in my face. The Aussie turned and told me that I absolutely had to write about this. I agreed, but I knew that it would be a while, since it hurt me from back before I was me. That time traveling bitch. La Plus Belle was just getting started. There was much more that she had to make me understand about the city, not her in particular, but any city. Any city.
/into chapter 3/ >>>dissect and dispel surrogation; bring in Ring Shout? then launch into rhythm analysis
(c) anna beatrice scott 2008, all rights reserved
