Ambition Squared: New Orleans

As David and I work on our Ambition Squared projects, and discover new ones, I’ll be giving you little updates here. Hopefully this will help continue the conversation about how we form the marriages we need to sustain ourselves. So here is what I hope is the first update of many.
A few weeks ago we went to New Orleans as Part II of plan traveltraveltravel (the honeymoon was Part I, maybe I’ll tell you a little about that one day). Because, you know, we figure travel is a habit that we should get into before we are hauling wee ones around the world.

We were in New Orleans for a wedding of an old friend and we stayed a few days, just for us. New Orleans was different than any place I’d ever been, joyful and sad all at once. It drew me in, and made me want to come back, to become a regular at a cafe on Magazine Street, get to know the people, acquire a house with a porch. But what knocked me on my heels in New Orleans was the music. Our first full day in the city we were walking down a street in the French Quarter and an jazz band was playing in the middle of the street. They were a bunch of scruffy urbanites about our age, playing brass, dancing, and singing.It seemed like the most normal thing in the world, them making that music in the street, like it was as easy as breathing. I’ve found that every time I travel somewhere new, there is a moment when suddenly I see something I’ve never seen before, quite, and my perspective of the world changes a tiny bit. In New Orleans, this was that moment. I grew up around lots of music and dance (I dance, I don’t play anything) but I’d never seen music integrated into a city quite like that. I’d never been to a city where music seemed like it’s beating heart.

So there I was with my new husband in the French Quarter listening to jazz and suddenly pondering learning the Lindy Hop. There are *many* imperfect parts of my life right now, and many stressful, anxious moments, but there are also moments like that. Moments where you step back and think, I don’t know how I got this so right, but here we are.

I wanted to track down that nameless jazz band for you, that jazz band who’s CD I did not buy (stupid, stupid, stupid), but I figured it would be impossible. But one google search later, I found it: The Loose Marbles (Or Little Big Horns. We’re not quite sure) with Meschiya Lake. The band that put ‘learn the Lindy Hop*’ on David’s and my to do list:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYbXN93jnU8]
So thank you Meschiya, thank you Loose Marbles, and thank you New Orleans. We’ll be back.

I’m aware that they are not doing the Lindy Hop in this video. But I liked it. So there.
Pictures are by me, shot on our new 35mm Holga

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