Bob Dylan on New Orleans

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

I showed up in New Orleans in early spring, moved into a large rented house 
near Audubon Park, a comfortable place, all the rooms fair sized, furnished 
quite simply, wardrobe cupboards in just about every room. We couldn't have 
come to a better place for me. It was really perfect. You could work slow 
here. They were waiting at the studio, but I didn't feel like jumping into 
anything. Sooner or later I'd have to get to the point but I could try it 
on another day. I brought a lot of the songs with me, I was pretty sure 
they would hold up veil.

Right now, I strolled into the dusk. The air was murky and intoxicating. At 
the corner of the block, a giant, gaunt cat crouched on a concrete ledge. I 
got up close to it and stopped and the cat didn't move. I wished I had a 
jug of milk. My eyes and ears were open, my consciousness fully alive. The 
first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying ¦ grounds-the 
cemeteries-and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are 
here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them 
sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres-palatial mausoleums made to order, 
phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay-ghosts of women and men who 
have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't 
pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time. The ghosts 
race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing- spirits, 
all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places 
you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. 
Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, 
there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting 
going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or 
somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the 
dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life 
romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't 
see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems 
to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I 
like the way it is.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a 
thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a 
ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like 
crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the 
gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No 
action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens 
full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white 
myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you 
feel cool and clear inside.

Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou Temple-type cottages and 
lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild 
grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long 
line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, 
cast-iron balconies, colonnades-thirty-foot columns, gloriously 
beautiful-double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide 
world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public 
executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other 
dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then 
tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. 
You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost 
from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. 
Spirit empire.- Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemand, was 
said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his 
commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said 
that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The 
devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great 
place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel 
hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in 
front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be 
intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart-to feed 
pigeons looking for handouts. A great place to record. It has to be-or so I 
thought.