I went to New Orleans one year ago. I went to find voodoo.
I did find it. But not in a cool way; I found voodoo in a yoohoo way. Voodoo was all, "Yoohoo! Here I am," then disappeared behind a building and when I caught up and looked... no sign of Voodoo. She had moved on and taken the Loa and the Orisha with her.
I traveled as a mover and the day before we left I fell off the cab of the truck while loading and I bent my finger backwards at the middle knuckle. It was an inauspicious beginning.
In Missouri I saw this:
All of small towne America is a used up dustbin. The bad omens were stacking up, but my enthusiasm is indefatigable.
Arriving in the city I spent everyday walking around. I saw this awesome car sitting in the middle of the street like a beacon.
Sotting here in perfect cinematic lighting.
The car was parked outside the set of a film shoot scheduled for midnight. Inside, a couple low-paid set dressers were sweeping a warehouse space full of floats.
These aren't money shots or anything, but it gives you the gist of the moment.
New Orleans is full of magic, graves, and broken sidewalks. I suppose those all go hand in hand with the dance of life, and are indicative of the stage of spiritual maturity someone, or some city is at. Magic, broken infrastructure, death...
Watch where you step. Perhaps they don't resurface the sidewalks because this happens:
Some might call this sigil magic. Every slab of cement a tablet. The Cement Tablet of Orisha.
Art magic, is everywhere. Murals are everywhere. Cats are everywhere. This painting on the city of a building, hovering over an empty lot seemed particularly magical to me, with the star and the baby-man. It's out of context here. The full mural is something about a dead local celebrity.
This memorial of Baby-man is even cooler when dissected from its original mural memorial.
When searching for magic, a great place to begin, as I learned from searching voodoo on Google a maps, is a botanica. Botanicas are emporiums of all the herbs, oils, and accouterments that you need to make your mojo gogo. Botanicas are all over the place in New Orleans, smeared so plentifully that you can buy your basic oils, incense, charcoal, and burners at the local supermarket. Every grocer is had a had in botanicism.
I found what I thought was the most legit voodoo ship of them all, Voodoo Spiritual Temple, a hole in the wall on Rampart Street. I knew it was for real because it didn't agree to it's posted hours, unlike the tourist voodoo shops in the French Quarter where you can buy Col. Potter tarot cards.
Inside, I announced my intentions with probing questions and the girl at the counter just sighed at me. "I'm sick of hearing about voodoo," she said. "It's just a religion." They're jaded down there by voodoo tourism. I don't know why. I'm not jaded by beer tourism here in Milwaukee. I couldn't break the ice with anyone on the subject. They were all tight lipped. In fact, the priestess-proprietor, Priestess Miriam herself, just laughed at me.
I had made a joke.
The interchange went like this:
Priestess Miriam, "Are you a lawyer?"
The Skräuss, "Ha! No."
Priestess Miriam, "A doctor?"
"No."
"A psychiatrist?"
"Ha. I need a psychiatrist."
That was the joke. She laughed, I thought at the hilarious wit, but actually at the hilarious chump in the white shirt. She finished laughing and said, "We don't provide psychiatric help," ushered a crying woman into the back room, and disappeared behind her, leaving me with the tired young woman behind the counter. I bought some self-starting incense, which won't actually stay lit. And left.
Further up on Rampart I found a vegan priestess who actually agreed to be interviewed by me for Image For Hire. I left my number in her shop, which has two excellent alters; I left a railroad spike in the Ogun alter, Loa of travel and iron. A few nights later I stood on the railroad tracks bordering Bywater and Maringy, and I asked Ogun to help me out. When I stepped again into the street my phone rang. It was the vegan priestess!
We chatted and made arrangements. But when I called back, from Milwaukee, to actually arrange the recording date, she had no recollection of me or or call. I found this strange because she had said during the previous phone conversation, "We were talking about you." So I assumed they would remember me. Perhaps they have short memories in the south where life is slower.
Over all, my trip was a bust. I made several pleasing videos, which are all on my YouTube channel, but didn't connect to any voodoo.
At the train station the day I was leaving I found a voodoo/hoodoo practitioner on YouTube who was based in New Orleans. He would have been good to interview for my radio show if I had had knowledge of his existence just a couple days earlier.
Extreme measures to remove the clock from an alligator's stomach.
The time monster is tamed across the river in a sleepy town called Algiers, where the art magic drops off severely, as if plunged over the continental shelf, sink out of sight, forgotten.
I took the cash-only ferry over the Mississippi River one day and was stuck with only plastic and the kindness of strangers, who gave me the two dollar fare.
I was looking for the home of artist Larry Neville. I had seen his work in The New Orleans Art Center on St. Claude Avenue. I adore this painting:
Larry Neville is great. I got to meet him, he agreed to appear onImage For Hire. We sat down together in the sweltering gallery and enjoyed a discussion, which I recorded, broadcast, and archived here:
I don't think that I found his home in The Cut Off (a metric of Algiers), or the Cut Off itself, which is actually what I was searching for. But if you ever go to New Orleans, cross into Algiers and step into the One Stone Cafe. They helped me with a couple bucks and showcase this pinball machine:
