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mardi Gras
A
fter living in New
Orleans for 30 years,
I still cannot answer
The Question any better today than
I could that long-ago summer when I
arrived as a fresh-faced and very curious
Carnival virgin. It’s the stumper that all
New Orleanians get this time of year from
friends and family who live Elsewhere.
It’s The Question that has no correct answer.
(And not too many wrong ones, either.)
It’s like Joe Pesci’s character laments in
the movie “JFK:” It’s a riddle wrapped in a
mystery inside an enigma.
What question could be so confounding
and contrary as all that? This one: What is
Mardi Gras like?
It seems the easiest way to dispense with
the matter is to generally tailor your answer
to fit the specific interest areas and skill sets
of the inquisitor.
You tell your frat boy nephew that it’s just
one big drunk. You regale your old musician
buddies from back home with tales of
closing down Frenchmen Street with the
Morning 40 Federation at sunrise on Lundi
Gras, with both the band and the audience
spilling out of the barroom doors and onto
the street. You whisper to your Aunt Bitty
and her gaggle of gossipy doyennes about
the secrecy, political intrigue and high-stakes
brokering of social status that surrounds
the selection of Rex, the King of Carnival
and his consort, the Queen of Mardi Gras.
And you tell your mom of Friday brunch
at Galatoire’s with its well-dressed yet
raucous crowd assembled to enjoy the ritual
of musical chairs, wherein high-spirited
friends and strangers traditionally eschew
any interest in their meals in favor of visiting
one another’s tables. The seats at Galatoire’s
the Friday before Mardi Gras are so coveted
that folks begin queuing up with folding
chairs and sleeping several days in advance.
Et cetera, and so on.
By this means we discover what was
glaringly obvious all along: Mardi Gras fits
more snugly into a whole lot of little, tiny
boxes than it does in one big container.
AmIright? It’s an unwieldy beast that defies
simple characterization. Quick: Give me a
brief sentence that ties together Muse’s shoes,
the Skull and Bones gangs and The Sweep.
Crickets.
See what I mean?
You could bleed a
thesaurus of all its
ink and still not
capture the essence
of Mardi Gras or
even come close. Add to this challenge the
degree of difficulty for folks who came of
age in the Aughts, trying to answer that
question in 140 characters or less.
Like I said, there is no correct answer to
The Question. But that other thing I said? I
take that back. Upon further consideration,
I realize: There are, in fact,
many
wrong
answers.
My own answer, for many years, has been
this: It’s like the Grand Canyon or Graceland.
Unless you see it for yourself, there’s simply no
way to understand it. No photograph will
ever tell the story. And you could bleed a
thesaurus dry, et cetera.
And that’s all good and well;
Carnival’s elusive essence, it’s shape-
shifting form, its ephemeral character,
its chaotic precision and precise chaos
and its over-all existential fluidity
— and masked intentions — are
all what make it the magnificent
unknowable splendid enigma it
is — an aromatic, incandescent
mojo-scorching, alter-calling
flash mob of the senses
and sexibility.
Or something like
that.
There is no sin-
gular particular
characteristic of
Mardi Gras. It’s a deeply personal event. It’s
everybody’s own thing. As the Rebirth Brass
Band says, it’s Do Whatcha Wanna time.
While the community as a whole churns
along in groovy, grinding and astounding
Bacchanalian synchronicity, the fact is,
everybody
is
doing their own thing in their
own place with their own peopleThat’s why
you can’t describe or define Mardi Gras —
because it’s those million little pieces.
ROUSES.COM
49
Mardi Gras — It’s like the Grand Canyon or
Graceland. Unless you see it for yourself,
there’s simply no way to understand it. No
photograph will ever tell the story.
baby portraits by
Frank Aymami