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Senior Editors Joe Longo and Jarret Lofstead play Hawkeye & Trapper John on Society Columnist Cookie, a little meatball surgery.
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Of those who've chosen to make their lives in New Orleans (but were not born here), few have come to this city free of Romantic notions. To the outsider, New Orleans weighs as myth, fulfilling the niche of sweet fantasy for most, a visceral, palpable alternative to "real life" that a standard, American-made existence doesn't allow. We come to New Orleans to catch beads and hints of chicory and trumpet lines in the air, to have drunken hook-ups with foreigners, to party until the sun breaks, finish off the last of the party, then go to work. We come to experience, to be as free as possible in the United States. By Tennessee Williams' overwrought dialogue and Octoroon dreams, we take these Romantic notions as self-evident.
It does not take long to realize in order to really get New Orleans, there is a Faustian hand you must play. To a greater or lesser extent, every citizen here understands this gambit: life here can be beautiful, but beauty can be difficult. In order to really understand New Orleans, to participate in the myth that is the city, you must brush up against tragedy. You will never make as much money as you could somewhere else. You or someone you know will be robbed, assaulted, or otherwise molested, and you will become entangled in strange relationships which tax your emotional threshold.
But you will eat and drink better and you will meet people more interesting people than you could ever hope to meet back home. You get to dance through the ghetto, to wake up one morning and realize it's Mardi Gras, and know you will not go to work. And though long ago your interest in beignets, Chartreuse, and Lestat may have passed, you will still have moments when crossing Jackson Square or watching the river from the fly that strike you as the most beautiful moments in the world.
It is a truth that we exist in a Manichean city, and it is one of our more unhealthy habits that we're so aware of that fact. We fill roles countless others have played over three hundred years, a tribe of hedonists (masochists). Tennessee's Crescent City has now been updated to include images of barefoot refugees wandering sun-blasted overpasses. The perception that New Orleans is not a real place obtains now more than ever, yet New Orleans is now more real than ever.
In this issue of NOLAFugees, we explore the nature of the bargain we've made to live here. It seems even as we gain, we lose. Our fascination with this place changes as we age, even as our fascination with ourselves changes to reflect what we, as New Orleanians, have experienced in the first year of Reconstruction. The articles in this issue of NOLAFugees reflect that change, as a city already filled with unstable personalities is up-ended and left to seek meaning in the wake.
Joe Longo, Jarret Lofstead
The Editors
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