This is a hopeful post

I went to Jazzfest with two old friends of my dad’s who are from here and got to do opening day like a local. I have never used a hugger for my beer, brought a lawn chair to a festival, or eaten crawfish before. I picked a great day to start. J Monque’D is where we began, the place where I first got close to the people who make this festival unlike any other. Here, adults with plastic crawfish on their shoelaces and little tamboreens can listen more or less unbashfully to a song about Monque’D whipping out his whizbang and playing with it at the dinner table-- “this song goes out to all the ladies and to children of all ages”. A woman with a little crazy in her eye and a mardi gras umbrella that looks like a roof after a big storm can lead a parade through the crowd and the crew that follows her is as full of weirdness as she is.

Monque’D said that this year his songs were going out to those who didn’t make it through Katrina; that he was glad to be here, and glad just to be. But, he added, “Every year I have a new reason to play the blues” and he took his last moments to put Darfur in the airwaves. From there, after a good-moving Latin interlude with Vivaz and the lead singer’s shout out to the crowd in heavily accented English, “This is a wonderful day!” we made our way to the Dylan show.

It seems from my short experience and careful observation that as you get older, you get better at relaxing, and maybe it’s a skill that is particularly part of the Beat generations’ growing up. We sat way in the back of the class with a decent angle on the big screen and laughed about Dylan’s entrance music. It sounded like the crowd was being prepared for an army of gladiators. “He’s a common man,” said Michael with a sly chuckle.

He comes out in cowboy gear so bright and clean that I felt like I was watching rodeo on the OLN. It was like a joke, but the joke was on us. He’s told us for years “I have always considered politics just part of the illusion. I don't get involved much in politics. I don't know what the system runs on,” but it’s only since he’s taken his old image apart and taken his old songs apart, only since he’s made the lyrics unintelligble just to scream “SEE! I’m not going to tell you what to do or think!” since he’s stopped making sense that we are forced to really believe him.

Maybe it’s a little sad. On Sunday, Springsteen was still singing “We Shall Overcome” and I sort of wanted to reverently wave a lighter in the air with the clean thirty-somethings in front of me who remembered towards the end of the set that that was something you could do at a concert, but I just couldn’t. Dylan doesn’t say a word about the hurricane, or about New Orleans being a great city (it is), not a word about music shining on like a beacon (it does). But for me, Dylan, more sound than sense, faded memory of an old familiar song just piercing the veil of consciousness--- oh wait he said all along the watchtower-- seems closer to the truth. To me he sings that human nature and the rest of the elements in all of their wild manifestations are not something to be overcome, but something to learn to survive, to joke about, to enjoy as best you can.

Whatever he’s saying, he says it right somehow. Maybe it’s something about his timing, something about putting us in time with him. I ask Michael for some peanuts and he says to me “Help yourself cause FEMA ain’t gonna do shit” and Dylan comes in wailing on the harmonica. We grin. At some point the big screen goes dark so that all we can see are the People and the Acura logo over the stage and Dylan with translator-Michael says, “into each life a little rain must fall” so that I am kept unsure of whether to laugh or cry. . . and I laugh.

And then Dylan turns the stage over to the real New Orleaneans who can love to listen to Dr. John, to Linda dancing with that Big Easy step, waving an alligator walking stick in the air instead of her second line umbrella and taking a moment to feel confident that New Orleans can't resist putting itself back together.