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Mardi Gras Madness
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THE SPRING BREAK QUEST: by Sean O.
You’d think spring break should be a crazy, non-stop party or something. Somehow, this annual week long even has developed in which thousands of kids descend upon the Southern United States and surrounding areas to engage in hearty amounts of the three venerable "oozins" of college life: boozing, shmoozin, and snoozing. And yet, crazy as it may sound, the mild Friday afternoon of this past March 7th found this particular college student with quite little on the itinerary. In fact, by the time I had piled into the car to head for home in St. Louis, most of my friends were well on their way on trips to various non-Missouri locales and had probably already engaged in at least one oozin. Oh, what to do? Well, on something of a pre-meditated whim (if such a thing is possible), my father and I decided to get into the car and head down to New Orleans. I have found that there are two kinds of people who roam the streets of the Big Easy. The first are those people who understand what the waitress means when she asks, "Do you want that sandwich dressed?" The second are those people who will look at that same waitress with a blank stare, haphazardly guessing that she has perhaps slipped into Hittite or some other ancient tongue for the moment. This second group of people we call "tourists" and I was one of them. God bless and God damn the tourists. We keep business humming and Bourbon Street lively but boy can we be a pain in the ass. Some needing help here. Some getting lost there. All of them getting wasted everywhere. As appealing as it may seem to visit a city and spend all of your nights drinking ridiculous amounts of the same beer you drink at home and then to spend all of your days recovering from all of your nights, I opted for a different plan. I decided to go on something of an Ezra Pilgrimage. It sounds a bit dramatic, I know. New Orleans ain’t no Santiago de Compostela and among Tom, Kevin, and Travis, I’d wager that none has been canonized by the Catholic Church. But, technicalities aside, I set out to learn about the peoples and places that comprise the home of the band I so readily refer to as, "my favorite." |
The quest was certainly a fun one. I visited the House of Blues. I went
to Juan’s Flying Burrito. I had a mini-thin or two with cherry coke as I
walked the cobblestone streets of the French Quarter. Heck, I searched
each and every staircase for even a single angelic inhabitant. No luck
on that one. But rather than try and convey all my experiences in a
single article I’d like to elaborate on the one that was the most
meaningful for me. Strangely enough, the best part of my Ezra Pilgrimage
didn’t even take place in New Orleans at all. I’d talked my dad into
taking a bit of a detour on the way home because there was one Better
Than Ezra spot I just couldn’t miss: State Street. Thus, we set a course
for Baton Rouge and put "Artifakt" on repeat.
Now, you might be asking why "State Street State of Mind?" Why the excitement over a visit to a location mentioned in the last track of an album that’s a bit of an oddities and rarities collection? Well, basically, because I think "State Street State of Mind" almost perfectly embodies what this band manages to do so well. What Better Than Ezra does is they take the simplicity of everyday life and they frame it with music and lyrics in such a way that you recognize just how fraught with purpose the most seemingly mundane things are. They are songs that make you realize just how much living poetry there is in something so simple as singing on the hood of a car or screaming out its window. In "State Street State of Mind," the voice grows to a point where he is both conscious of and contented with the common beauty of day-to-day life. He dubs this way of thinking as a "State Street State of Mind." We found State Street after a couple wrong turns and only with the aid of a nice old guy who informed us "if you sneeze, you’ll miss it." It is, indeed, a small street and one that has all the luxuries commonly associated with off-campus student housing. But as I walked up and down that street, the song buzzing in my mind, I tried to find the ghosts of Kevin’s words: the girl by the windowsill, the music up the street, people walking around barefoot. And I tell you what, for a couple moments there, as I just sort of walked along, the overgrown sidewalks and rusty bikes and dirty white apartments of State Street really were all that I needed with life. The simple things weren’t just what was good; they were what I wanted. Ten hours later, I found myself back at home in my own little neighborhood in good ole St. Louis. But, I really took that State Street experience back with me. It was that kind of good feeling that sticks around in the back ground as you go along, like the warmth of the setting sun on your back. So, in a way, I suppose I really did go on a pilgrimage. Funny thing, that. I’m guessing it won’t be the last, though – I never did get around to listening to WWOZ in stereo. Thanks for sharing your Spring Break adventure with the SERENADE Sean. |
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