competition

Greetings from The Big Easy! Wish you were here, Martha my dear, or do I wish that I’d never laid eyes on your own lying eyes, which have inflated my cheeks with butterfly kisses? Perhaps I’ll figure that one out after a dose of jazz and voodoo, New Orleans style. Yes, I’m finally away from you and New York, on the holiday (Irish for ‘vacation’) that you said I needed, in the place that you haven’t stopped raving about since I first fell for you.

I haven’t yet come across the church that you did acid in, or encountered the street loony who predicts the destruction of the city, since I only arrived an hour ago, after forty-two, arse shattering, hours on a bus. You can’t sit still for forty-two seconds unless you’re doped, so don’t bother asking why I didn’t invite you along. Whatever you may think, know that I had to take this adventure alone. I can’t possibly describe the journey in a text, or on the back of a postcard, so I’m writing you an old fashioned letter, on old fashioned napkins, as I sit at an empty table in a jam-packed bar on Duval Street.

Without a wink of sleep, it’s been a dream, seeing America from the window of a Greyhound bus. At night I felt like I was flying in the Millennium Falcon, at light speed! The blinking lights of passing trucks seemed more like those of alien cruise ships, here to admire the puffing flames of New Jersey’s oilfields, exploding like stars on the event-horizon. What a sight in the dead of night.

In New York, as you know, the dawning sun sings ‘Live and Let Die’ before extinguishing the night with a blinding blast of pyrotechnics, announcing that; The Greatest Show On Earth is back in town again. Beyond that fantasy island off the coast of America, the sun lazily yawns before leisurely rising, to reflect upon signposted invitations to; ‘TAKE EXIT NINE TO SANDY WHITE BEACHES’ and ‘PEACHES’ and ‘FIRECRACKERS - NEXT EXIT.’ More signs than any advertised ‘SALVATION’ at the next exit, but I felt that I was on a direct route to redemption.

A stopover in Atlanta briefly burst my bubble of bliss. Most breaks were at fast-food dives, or stuffy bus stations on the bad sides of one-sided towns. In Atlanta I observed a case of consensual segregation. When African-American passengers would board buses, they would, without exception, sit with blacks, while the white folk would hastily scan the heads for one of their own kind to sit beside, before departing from the city that Martin Luther King had been born into. Smoking outside the bus station, I stood out like a cigarette machine in a hospital. As I dished out smokes to black dudes, I answered, in my barmy Brooklyn twang, the recurring question, “Why you trampin’ it on the dog?”

Blacks ride the Greyhound. Whites fly. That’s apparently how Black America sees America. As you know, Martha, I can’t risk flying, since I’ve overstayed my visa by years (partly due to my love for you). If the INS gets a peep at my passport they will frame and they will hang it, like a trophy, before doing the same to me, although there’s not much framing to be done.

The further south that I travelled, the more Irish I felt. I guess I’m not a New Yorker after all! When I trusted you, I never, for a day or a dollar, felt the want, or the need, to look beyond you, or beyond New York for greater wonders. But once that Greyhound had crossed the Hudson River, I felt as if I was cheating on both you and Lady Liberty. Perhaps I still love you both madly. Perhaps you are both one and the same; the dolled-up neon whore, who pours over her body, from the one steaming cup; the dreams of all the world, as she dances the Dance of the Seven Veils. Lady Liberty is a fake and a tease, whereas the ragged and raw Belle of the South, who has suffered a recurring history of rape, shows and knows only naked truth.

There now seems to be an extremely polite and civil war being waged in the South. On the frontline of poverty, the Native American Indians, uniformed in Budweiser T-shirts, tip their baseball caps as they tap empty shopping carts against the enemy’s empty carts. There are many enemies, all fighting for dignity, on many fronts. For African-Americans to advance from being declared as being five-eights of a person, to living in their very own shot-gun shacks in shit-hole towns was a surge forward. But, for whites to go from being the lords of the new-world, to living in shot-gun shacks in shit-hole towns has got to wound, particularly when they now have to go and plough their own fields, just like their coloured neighbours. Passing through South Carolina, I was mesmerised by the sight of a Native American Indian, sitting in silence, atop a rusty red hill. His people were once the chiefs of all the lands before his eyes. Now they are the oddballs and the losers. But where, I wondered, and who were the winners?

A ragged Rebel flag hung lifeless above a dive bar in Mobile, Alabama, like a lynching mob had hung it there.‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ (bless you Martha, for turning me onto The Band) played loud in my mind, as every town that I passed through illustrated the pages of an open history book. After passing a billboard advertising an Eminem concert, I was reminded that America tends to change with the turning of every page. Every sight along this adventure has brought a song to mind. Every State: ‘Jersey Girl’, ‘Sweet Virginia’, ‘Carolina In My Mind’, ‘Georgia On My Mind’, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’…

It bugs me that I can only hear your voice singing these songs. Why does this holiday away from you only intoxicate my heart with you? Why do I feel compelled to scribble these words onto a pile of napkins, when you shattered my heart with betrayal and your true devotion to something which is killing you? You actually exhaust me more than forty-two hours of trampin’ it on the dog. My neck aches like it’s supporting a bowling ball. My feet just feel funny and fizzy. As for my arse, I seem to have left that somewhere back in North Carolina. But my heart aches more than anything. Still, looking back, the rewards of the journey eclipse the suffering.

Holding my eyelids aloft, I gazed out at Alabama, thinking that I must clearly be in the Amazon by now. Had I slept through Mexico? I’d never seen such a jungle! Forty new shades of green dazzled my eyes. The pastel pink houses had surely been ancient long before the Civil War. Elderly farmers, slouching on crooked wooden porches, resembled melting waxworks. The old-timers checked their watches as the Greyhound zoomed by and I wondered if the bus was running early or late… but I truly felt out of time, entrenched in the magic of the moment.

Before I knew where I was, I was passing through The Delta and the cotton fields of Louisiana; where the blues were first harvested and where Robert Johnson had sold his soul to the devil, for a wicked tune. The Greyhound took a breather here, and when I shambled down the steps, the heat hit my face, like an oven stacked with Southern Fried Chicken. I stretched my Tin Man legs and was delighted to discover fluffy Spanish Moss hanging from the oak trees, like Mother Nature’s festive decorations. Yes, I know you love this stuff. I’ve collected a big bag of it for you.

It was dark and raining when the bus finally arrived in New Orleans. For the previous hour I had been panting, looking out at the dancing full moon and her reflection on the black swamps either side of the highway. After hobbling to the taxi rank, I hailed a blue cab to the hostel, India House, where, in its garden of soupy green ponds and cute wee foot bridges, a fairytale has surely been dreamed. This wonderland of chimes and charms is teaming with life; frogs and cats and faeries, all dancing together in a voodoo trance.

I had memorised a map of the city during the bus ride, and, for once, my nonsense of direction served me well as I skipped down a rain glossed Canal Street, buzzing with anticipation. Exactly where it was on the map in my mind, there it was before me, the French Quarter: That spiritual whorehouse of the rising sun that jazz had been born in. Holding up my umbrella like Liberty’s lantern, I raced down a deserted Bourbon Street, yelping with a primal excitement, which amplified the unfamiliar music in my heart. As I ran past dozens of dazzling bars, the music from one jammed into the next, like I was turning the dial on God’s own radio. Live blues; jazz; rock ’n’ roll; soul; Cajun… No commercials! Heaven!

When I reached the end of the street, I sprinted back again, feeling as if my soul was herding music back into my core. To catch my breath, I stopped under the flashing neon ‘Desire’ sign. My ears honed in on a savage blues band playing in the nearest bar, as my eyes focused on a silver haired, skeletal woman, sitting, with practiced posture, under a gigantic umbrella. She was painting, on an easel, the street scene before her eyes, like she was conducting an orchestra with her brush, with jazzy results. Feeling fab-tastic, I dissolved into the beauty of her water-coloured night, for the length of three guitar solos and two choruses of a Jellyroll Morton song pounding from the bar. I then laid down my umbrella in exchange for a paper one in a cocktail glass.

The rain soon stopped, so, after enjoying a potent ‘Hurricane’ drink, I went for a ramble around the Quarter. I have arrived between Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, but it’s still pretty manic. The steaming cobbled streets were soon crowded with tipsy tourists, sipping beers as they sauntered aimlessly. Pretty girls were decorated with colourful beaded necklaces, usually awarded to those who flashed their breasts. I watched the beads being tossed up to and down from the balcony parties, but didn’t spot a single bare boob (don’t cry for me, Martha!) … possibly for the simple reason that, of all my senses, my ears were taking up the majority of my mind’s downloading ability.

A four foot tall trumpet player was belting out, ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ on a street corner. I performed an all too brief boogie-woogie for him, before strolling on, when my ears were blasted with the urgent announcement; “Everybody in the house, clap yo hands! Welcome back to the stage, the Delta Crocks!” The opening chords of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, which had been echoing in my head for the entire day, was, by now, as enticing to me as a Delta crock of shit.

“Lucky Dogs! Lucky Dogs!” boomed a voice over the crowds on the street. Another band? Nope. The most enormous hotdogs on the planet. I munched down two Lucky Dogs as I sauntered along, wiping mustard from the groovy red shirt that you bought for me. Sorry! Will the mustard stain it? Perhaps a psychic will have the answer to that. They’re everywhere here, sitting in the archways, offering to reveal the future, and the recent past, to redneck tourists too hammered to remember it. Knowing and loving the present would do me just fine.

Right now, sitting in this bar, the singer (who sounds like Aretha Franklin being banged senseless by Louis Armstrong) is hollering from the stage; “Ma name is Miss Nancy Shores and I ain’t got no draws on. Get yo’ draws off fo’ me tonight!”

The crowd laughs as I picture you sitting here, giving me your mischievous smile as you run your heel up my leg. I smile, until I remember that you have chose to suffocate your spirit while I have chose to resurrect my own. You say you have no choice anymore, while I now only hear the victorious voice of that demon within you speak. The defence which you sought, against the sufferings of life, has only shielded your eyes from the wonders of life.

It’s been good for me to finally take the holiday; to step back from the microscope of bitterness, and to observe what is worth saving and fighting for. Take a step back Martha, and take it all in, like yesterday was the day before your birth, like today is your first day on Earth. You don’t know what you’re missing. I know, without a doubt, what I am missing.

I’m all out of napkins.

Lots of love and Spanish Moss,

Mick.