Viewses of the Muses

Opus is sitting next to me on the desk draped in a string of blue and silver Mardi Gras beads with MUSES written on the emblem. While it's really not appropriate to keep Mardi Gras beads after Ash Wednesday, I think that Opus is going to be wearing those beads for quite some time. I need him to wear them, for me. I need him to serve as my surrogate Muse. I need that energy; I need that worship of the energy that those nine girls have to give.

As I left Cooter Brown's last night, I knew I was running behind and I was suddenly afraid that I had spent too long on the computer and that the one parade I really wanted to catch was going to be a miss. You see, it's a long way down from Riverbend to Napolean (where the parade turrns onto St. Charles and proceeds toward downtown and I waited passed the time when the buses stop. I had to find a way to make the hour long trek in fifteen minutes or my hopes of Muses would be dashed upon the flotsam and jetsam of the neutral ground, right there between the broken streetcar tracks.

But the Muses – those nine lovely ladies – were with me. A cab that had passed me headed the wrong way and full of people turned around after he dropped off his fare and drove back toward me, honked his horn and didn't even grumble when I asked him if he could take me the rest of the way to Napolean (a cab ride that wasn't going to make him a lot of money and WAS going to cause him a fair amount of trouble in the parade traffic). "No problem," the driver said. He dropped me three blocks from Napolean, I paid him, hopped out and was instantly confronted with the waving, shouting, screaming crowd that packed the corner of Napolean and St. Charles as the giant glowing high heeled shoe that is the star float of MUSES rounded the corner pointing toward my home. I had made it after all.

The only other time I attended the Muses parade was two years ago when I came in right at the beginning of the biggest part of Carnival Celebrations (two weeks before Ash Wednesday). That night, I dropped my bags, dug out my video camera and trudged up to the corner of St. Charles to catch the Muses parade for one reason alone… I had heard that their signature throw was a set of beads featuring a high heeled shoe and I wanted to catch one for my daughter who was then a senior in college. It seemed appropriate to me that Jennifer, just on the verge of entering the "adult world," should have for inspiration a high heeled shoe bead from the only night time marching all women's krewe (there is one other all female krewe, the Krewe of Iris, but they are far more demure and they parade in the light of day). What I was not ready for was the set of gunshots that would ring through the neighborhood just as that big glowing shoe passed by where I was standing.

This year, things were a bit more sedate, though calling any Mardi Gras parade (especially this year) sedate is kind of an oxymoron, and using that term to refer to MUSES actually verges on the comppletely absurd. From the giant shoe, to the riding Elvises, to the Bearded Oyster Dance Troupe (yeah... that's right) to a series of floats based on the tragedy and absurdity of life after Katrina - including a final float with nobody on it dedicated to all the people who were lost - it was far from sedate. What it was was patently obvious WHY Mardi Gras exists.. and why it has existed in so many cultures for so very long.

New Orleans isn't the first, or the last, city and culture to face the devastation it has... not even in the last year! But Carnival says, no matter what.. no matter who... we WILL go on.

You can see ten minutes of the MUSES(distilled from two hours) here... just hang in there and let it load and it will be worth it. If your entire concept of "Mardi Gras" is drunk people on Bourbon Street you OWE it to yourself to see that Mardi Gras is so much more. If you've subscribed (or want to) the Food Fetish podcast on iTunes (just search the Music Store for Food Fetish, or upload this file to your player), you can download it there as well.

If you're on a schedule, a budget, a job, or dialup.... you can see the short version featuring all my favorite dancers, here.

I love my Muses... they make me smile!