Alexander of New Orleans

In May I organized the CoachVille 4th Annual conference and MC'ed the gala dinner.  If you were there, you heard me tell the story of Alexander, a street musician who delivered a pretty nifty message from God to me one Thursday afternoon. 

My thoughts have turned to him as I try to wrap my mind around   the horror and loss in this beautiful city which this past May gave me a fresh perspective and a rollicking good time.  I wonder if he made it out okay, although he was playing his trumpet by the riverwalk on the day I met him and that makes me worry for his safety.  He seemed not a man of means at all, just full of life and having lived, quick to the story, sharp for getting an extra dollar, cunning and guileless at the same time.  In this picture, taken by a young boy of about 11 who had never before seen a digital camera, he is playing a slightly out-of-tune song.  He is also getting comically close to my breast.  I laughed about it at the time and do still now.    You gotta give the old toothless street musician points for trying.

Our conversation was perfectly ordinary yet sprinkled with the divine.  As I shared with gala attendees a day after meeting Alexander, on a long walk through the beautiful streets of the residential part of New Orleans, past the rocking tourist bars and t-shirt shops, I had fallen in love with the charm of the place.  As I walked past the small enchanting homes, I saw several for sale or for rent with big French windows I could peek through to see fireplaces and old mouldings.  "I could come here and live half the year and just paint, write and play the piano."  I imagined a life near these relaxed and friendly people, near so much joie de vivre, near the fabled Mississippi and I let myself love the idea for a time on my walk.

Meandering back, I missed the hotel shuttle and so decided to make lemonade out of lemons by walking the long way around on the Riverwalk.  It was here Alexander singled me out and said, "Ah pretty song for a pretty lady," and started playing "Isn't She Lovely."  I recognized it for the ploy for donations it was, yet sat down to listen anyway.  Soon I was on the bench next to him and we were in conversation, he telling me about his travels to Russia and New York ("Hated the place.  Nowhere to relax," he told me of my favorite town).  He had a startlingly profound view of life, asking me what would be the point of doing things you don't love to do.  In my usual idealizing way, I ventured that, "Earning your living by playing your music in such a beautiful place must be close to heaven."  He responded, "It's not heaven and it's not hell.  Life always has a bit of both.  You just have to look at the good more than the bad and try and find a place where you see the heaven more than the hell."

The truly startling thing came after that.  He looked at my hands and said, "You're a piano player," out of nowhere.  I had not made a single reference to my piano-playing youth.  I was taken aback, having just spent my hours walking and thinking about my long-abandoned piano-playing, imagining how being in New Orleans could bring it all back, fill my life with music again.

"I haven't played in years."

He said, "You should start again.  You've got the music in you.  It's in your hands." 

That's about as close to a response to a prayer as I've ever had.

Where is Alexander now?  Where are those boys who didn't know what an e-mail address was when I so blindly and thoughtlessly offered to e-mail them the pictures we'd just taken together?  I remember Alexander's look when I said that, a mix of pity for me and for them, me for not knowing, them for what they did not know.  "Those boys don't know nothing about that."  he said to me.  For a few seconds I thought he might be kidding or might not know what he was saying.  Their bright and beautiful eyes showed me he was right, though.  No clue what "e-mail address" meant.  How insular, how ignorant of me not to realize, though still I ask myself, how would I have known?  Poverty and lack of access is not something you wear tattooed on yourself.  It is just a thing that eats at your future a bit and makes you helpless in the face of a killer rush of water and wind. 

It's highly probable I will never know what happened to them.  I pray for their safety and for the thousands of victims, alive, dead, injured, displaced, forgotten in Hurricane Katrina's wake.