Beware The Ides Of March!

A tale of joyful abandon, dancing in the streets, a good old fashioned bacchanalian revolt

Ah... hello friends. Somehow the entire month of March has come and gone, and here we are deep in the ides of April! Where to even begin? For New Orleanians the year started off with a violent tragedy that shook us to the core... and six days later began Carnival season. Nearly everyone I talked to in that two-month span of constant festivities leading up to Fat Tuesday was having a hard time getting into the spirit, including myself. A tragedy, followed a couple weeks later by a tragic inauguration, followed by what seems like non-stop tragic events. The city felt heavy as she sometimes does, the Carnival spirit felt forced... surreal. Yet we tried our best to sing, to dance.. to put on our silly costumes and leave our houses. We poured some grief into the hot glue, the threading of fabric, the cutting of paper. We poured one out for the homies. And finally came the big day. I dragged myself out of bed at four-thirty in the morning to throw on my green olive suit and bike to the ancient meeting grounds of Bayou Road to find the Northside Skull and Bone Gang waking up the city as they have for over two hundred years, drumming, chanting, and knocking on doors with bones.

Big Chief Sunpie delivered as usual, a timely and beautiful sermon about the healing power of community and connecting with the land we each live on. Rose petals were placed and songs were sung at the Tomb Of The Unknown Slave, reminding us of our not so distant past, and of the power each of us has to resist the culture of domination and change the course of humanity for better.

The whole parade felt like a slow moving meditation, and the sunrise caught me by surprise when it came glowing through the gnarled ancient oak branches. Walking back and reflecting on Sunpie's messages about nature, death, and "better get yourself together in THIS lifetime", I ran into a couple of sweet friends, and so began a long day of dancing in the streets.

I'm always humbled and amazed by New Orleanians' magic abilities to transform crippling grief into beauty, and this year radical joy as resistance has been on my mind. In an onslaught of doom and gloom, people's rights being stripped away daily, joy can feel so impossible. Mardi Gras has always been a collective action of resistance. If it weren't for the oppressive power of the church, there would be no Mardi Gras. People have since time immemorial used dance, wine, song, costume and comedy to process life's impossibilities. To mock the bourgeoisie, to be King for a day, to play the Trickster. Mardi Gras in New Orleans has always been a time for creative play, for experimentation. No one gives a shit if a manly cis-man is wearing fishnet pantyhose, six fake boobs, and neon pink hair. A high-femme could be covered in one thousand tiny fake penises like a psychedelic land-dwelling pufferfish and no one bats an eye. Strangers call strangers baby, and offer a snack, a sip of whiskey, or help untangle eachother's costumes from the wrought iron fence we just climbed over to get to the parade. Just for one magical day, anyone can dance in the streets uninhibited and feel completely liberated to be whoever they feel like being in that moment. If that's not a protest I don't know what is. So, as much as I was dreading the Gras this year, I did also find myself wishing it could be Fat Tuesday every day. Just sweaty, glittery humanity, free from the constructs of gender, class, and shame. Reflecting back the sparkly magic queerness of Mother Nature Themself.

This month's postcard is a handwritten message in a bottle, from the city of New Orleans. I hope the message will bring a little bottled essence of carnival and springtime sweetness direct to your doorstep!

Thanks again as always, for supporting my art. A percentage of this month's proceeds will be sent to the United Houma Nation of so-called Louisiana.