Big City. Beauty and ugliness is the attraction.
Walking down the street-Victorian architecture. A thousand faces from varied places.
Galleries, coffee shops. Everyone with their own scam till no one talks to you until
you have been sized up as to what your scheme is (holding onto your wallet so it won’t be stolen.)
A man in an izod sweater asks for a penny to buy a hamburger as you sip café au lait.
A beautiful woman looks like a manikin.
Sitting in a bar talking about friends who are lost on heroin.
The bartender opens up her shirt so we can see her chest. She reminds of a friend.
She says that she won’t get near addicts. A fine woman gets with an addict and ruins
her body. I think that there are at least thirty ways to take yourself out here, bury yourself.
Enter an art gallery, see work from a man from Barcelona. I chat with the director until she realizes
that I’m a no-sale, with a wink I know to leave the business.
This land is a swamp.
The topsoil from hundreds of years of Mississippi river currents flow to make Louisiana.
Someone pisses in St. Louis and someone drinks it in the French Quarter- tastes good!
Inside a VooDoo shop, seeing a medicine man’s ring, sold for $15.
Street musicians, jugglers, palm readers, tarot cards, saxophones, clarinets, the old jazz bands! Seafood!
Racial tensions. People bum cigarettes. Cities of the Dead. People come from all over to meet each other.
French, sweet smelling air. Six murders a day. Moisture of the atmosphere. Rippling water an’ river boats
undulate like visual hallucinations.
Passing.
The architecture- balustrades, homes on stilts,  cerulean homes, yellow. The Old South. Sugar magnolia trees. Palm trees. Poverty INTENSE Poverty. Gumbo duck soup chickaree coffee.
Thousands of chirping birds; Art everywhere, alcohol on the streets, smells of garbage and bad fish.
“Hey, WANNA BUY A STOLEN CAMERA?” A sense of foreboding a very dangerous place an awe-inspiring environment-
JUST LIKE ANYWHERE.
Take a creative life stance don’t hurt yourself stay sober avoid foolish company the company of fools. Be educated.
Seagulls. Human muzac man. Valentines with beautiful women looking out on the Mississippi river. Giant seafood platter. Dark lager.
Did I mention hurricanes?
Everyone asks, ‘so when are you moving here?’

Busker, New Orleans 1992.
mixed media on paper, 10″ x 14″