"The New Orleans 100" is a worldwide initiative that will highlight and encourage discussion among millions about 100 of the most innovative and world-changing ideas to take root in the city since Katrina. thanks justin!
I submitted to Constance (number 2 on the list) and had one of my early NOLA pieces published last year, a somewhat edited version of Razor Knives and Marching Bands (changed to Razor Knives by editor's suggestion).
ah ha. i found your name listed in issue #2. no link to your nola page though. i cant find razor knives and marching bands by searching your page either. have you published it online?
I'm pretty sure it was online but I may have taken it off. It was the one with a kid (in real life Marqin) on a bigwheel and me yelling at him for stealing the razor knife from my toolbucket, the mention of Dumaine tutoring, and a sensitive kid I cussed at and made cry, and the marching banding practicing for Mardi Gras passing by the crime scene where a pregnant, newly widowed girl faints as the rain washes her husbands blood into the gutter. It came from the original actually emailed from NOLA but I'm sure I reposted it. I probably took it off when I did the edit, for some reason.
im sure i have it in hard copy. glad to hear you getting published. bravo!
All I can about this is: "WOW!" Forgot where I found it, but it blew me away.
You're welcome :)
review
The book itself is alternatingly hilarious (Michael Patrick Welch’s loving description of teaching music to inner-city kids comes immediately to mind) and devastating (as in the bleak dissonance of Bud Faust’s poetry). At times, most notably in Susan Gisleson’s “Why I Live Below Sea Level,” it manages to be both. But the piece that captures what Strange described as “the duality of living in New Orleans” with the most poetic accuracy is Jim Louis’ “Razor Knives.” In the deceptively short non-fiction piece about the trials of tutoring kids in the Sixth Ward in 1995, Louis expresses the struggle of attempting to point others towards some sort of hope in the middle of horror, not to mention the effort it takes to remain positive oneself. That “Razor Knives” takes place ten years before Katrina serves only to underscore how the storm amplified an already-existing condition. The piece ends with a very simple setting of the scene, a scene that is a bit fantastical but, hey, in New Orleans circa 2008, what isn’t?
The student that Louis has been tutoring has left for the day, returning to the neighborhood “that hears, as we do, the nightly cough of gunfire.” Louis, meanwhile, is standing on his porch and looking out on the street when he perceives “five blocks down and one over, on St. Ann, a marching band practicing for Mardi Gras strut[ting] by a crime scene as the pregnant widow, seeing her husband’s blood washed by the rain into the gutter, faints.”
This is true life, the mélange of dark and light, good and evil, that exists everywhere but for whatever reason is played out in such shocking contrast in New Orleans. There is happiness, and there is sadness, there are celebrations and catastrophes, but the one thing that remains constant is the humanity and worth of the people who live at the storm’s center, the people who, everyday, are forced to come to terms with what it means to be alive in a world gone mad. Everywhere, in every city, life is a delicate burden; we just happen to handle ours—as we do everything here—on a stage much larger, much more extravagant. But in doing this, by capturing and expressing the losses and gains of normal human beings with such prescience, we show the rest of the world both the despair and the hope of being alive. In that way, New Orleans is teacher to the world.
That whole NO fucking blog has to get published as far as I'm concerned, Jim Louis you deserve a huge audience, you're way too good for just the likes of us.
yah!!
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- bill 9-11-2008 4:31 pm
I submitted to Constance (number 2 on the list) and had one of my early NOLA pieces published last year, a somewhat edited version of Razor Knives and Marching Bands (changed to Razor Knives by editor's suggestion).
- jimlouis 9-11-2008 4:41 pm [add a comment]
ah ha. i found your name listed in issue #2. no link to your nola page though. i cant find razor knives and marching bands by searching your page either. have you published it online?
- bill 9-11-2008 6:48 pm [add a comment]
I'm pretty sure it was online but I may have taken it off. It was the one with a kid (in real life Marqin) on a bigwheel and me yelling at him for stealing the razor knife from my toolbucket, the mention of Dumaine tutoring, and a sensitive kid I cussed at and made cry, and the marching banding practicing for Mardi Gras passing by the crime scene where a pregnant, newly widowed girl faints as the rain washes her husbands blood into the gutter. It came from the original actually emailed from NOLA but I'm sure I reposted it. I probably took it off when I did the edit, for some reason.
- jimlouis 9-11-2008 9:35 pm [add a comment]
im sure i have it in hard copy. glad to hear you getting published. bravo!
- bill 9-11-2008 9:39 pm [add a comment]
All I can about this is: "WOW!" Forgot where I found it, but it blew me away.
You're welcome :)
- Justin (guest) 9-11-2008 10:56 pm [add a comment]
review
The book itself is alternatingly hilarious (Michael Patrick Welch’s loving description of teaching music to inner-city kids comes immediately to mind) and devastating (as in the bleak dissonance of Bud Faust’s poetry). At times, most notably in Susan Gisleson’s “Why I Live Below Sea Level,” it manages to be both. But the piece that captures what Strange described as “the duality of living in New Orleans” with the most poetic accuracy is Jim Louis’ “Razor Knives.” In the deceptively short non-fiction piece about the trials of tutoring kids in the Sixth Ward in 1995, Louis expresses the struggle of attempting to point others towards some sort of hope in the middle of horror, not to mention the effort it takes to remain positive oneself. That “Razor Knives” takes place ten years before Katrina serves only to underscore how the storm amplified an already-existing condition. The piece ends with a very simple setting of the scene, a scene that is a bit fantastical but, hey, in New Orleans circa 2008, what isn’t?
The student that Louis has been tutoring has left for the day, returning to the neighborhood “that hears, as we do, the nightly cough of gunfire.” Louis, meanwhile, is standing on his porch and looking out on the street when he perceives “five blocks down and one over, on St. Ann, a marching band practicing for Mardi Gras strut[ting] by a crime scene as the pregnant widow, seeing her husband’s blood washed by the rain into the gutter, faints.”
This is true life, the mélange of dark and light, good and evil, that exists everywhere but for whatever reason is played out in such shocking contrast in New Orleans. There is happiness, and there is sadness, there are celebrations and catastrophes, but the one thing that remains constant is the humanity and worth of the people who live at the storm’s center, the people who, everyday, are forced to come to terms with what it means to be alive in a world gone mad. Everywhere, in every city, life is a delicate burden; we just happen to handle ours—as we do everything here—on a stage much larger, much more extravagant. But in doing this, by capturing and expressing the losses and gains of normal human beings with such prescience, we show the rest of the world both the despair and the hope of being alive. In that way, New Orleans is teacher to the world.
- dave 9-11-2008 11:16 pm [add a comment]
That whole NO fucking blog has to get published as far as I'm concerned, Jim Louis you deserve a huge audience, you're way too good for just the likes of us.
- L.M. 9-12-2008 2:43 am [add a comment]
yah!!
- Skinny 9-16-2008 11:35 am [add a comment]