Why Live Here

Hi, Golden Oldest. Someone sent me an E mail yesterday and asked me why I like New Orleans. I frequently complain about my city since Hurricane Katrina destroyed so much of it. With only half the pre Katrina population left, crime rising daily, familiar and endearing local businesses and cultural icons gone, destruction still all around, a flood of illegal immigrants looking both for work and for crime opportunity, exorbitant insurance rates, a now much higher cost of living and lower real estate values.... ah........you get the idea of the problems. But the question that was asked was what do I still like about the city.
Well, the simplest way might be to point to the flood of writers, poets, painters and musicians that seem to be flocking to us now. Yep! While we have lost many people, we are getting a smaller number of replacements that represent the creative genre that always flourished here, the same kind the city has always been known for. The "weird " ones are still attracted to this most singular place, and I think they are coming here because they fear New Orleans will die if they don't. They also know that, though New Orleanians have always been less educated and poorer than citizens elsewhere, we have also been among the most creative and artistic of people in the U.S. I will spare you a list of the famous and influential natives of this city, but it is a long one.
Music, writing, theater, and other creative arts are seemingly possessed by everyone who lives here. We have our own dialect of speech, we all play musical instruments, there are more theaters, artists and crazy "characters" born in New Orleans that one could imagine. The flood drowned us, but not our creative sprit. And now that so many have left, we are having blood transfusions of more "New Orleanian" types, those people crazy enough to live in a sick, dangerous and aimless city. The surprising thing is that the newbies are not malcontents, but rather the best, most successful and brightest from all parts of the U.S and from some areas abroad.. I think many of them come because they enjoy the thrill of being a part of reviving a city that was the victim of the greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States. They come for a few months, fall in love with this frontier town and set down roots here.
Just as Degas, Faulkner, Hemingway, Longfellow and countless others once came to live here, the hurricane has provided a magnet to lure more. And though artists can not save a drowning city (they better report on it or reflect it), they symbolize that New Orleans is seen as something special by the rest of the United States. The people of the U.S. do not want us to die, because we are a unique part of them. Home is where you choose to live. At least some good people have chosen to be here. We must be worth saving.
I think the intelligentsia who are coming are inspired by the lack of order, no, the madness of the city and people. We are and always have been unstructured, as artists themselves tend to be. There are few expectations, many surprises (often unpleasant ones) and constant opportunities to reflect on "why am I here". Ask anyone in New Orleans if he or she ever thought of moving away and they will likely say, "too many times to count". Maybe this explains why this city, tiny as it is now, has even more restaurants, more theaters, more writers and poets, more published works... more of the creative part than even before the hurricane. And for the adventurers who settle here we now have the opportunity to tell a version of how this city will or will not survive the hurricane that has put us in a semi coma state. There is surely a good source of material for any kind of artist who wants or needs it. They know it and come because of it. The dreary and inspiring things happening here are a kind of microcosm of what happens everywhere, a laboratory of the world. That always has been and is even more so after the hurricane's destruction. But for most that is not enough. Being creative is nice, but, for example, we do need out garbage collected and safety when on the streets..
So there is my answer. I have continued to live here because this place is an abstraction. It is dysfunctional and an abomination on a practical level, but the creative energy still lives in New Orleans. It's different to the chosen few, and that is good . Whether that is enough to save it, is doubtful. I may leave myself. The practical types have gone and will continue to flee. But it's nice to know that New Orleans will retain its strangeness through the crazies who will never flee and the new influx of the kind of people who fall in love with a sick and terminal patient.
Have fun in your ordinary and normal place...the adventure continues here.