new orleans on our minds

i've never been to new orleans.

i've never seen the french quarter. i've never danced a second line or tasted etouffee.

i know the midwest and parts of the new south. i know post-industrial and rustbelt cities. i know vacant downtown spaces where rubber and tobacco money once made things happen. i don't know new orleans.

but strangely, or not strangely at all, as i sat and watched spike lee's made-for-hbo documentary "when the levies broke: a requiem in four acts" with my new southern family, i began to mourn this city - to grieve a place i've never seen or touched or felt myself.

i still haven't worked through all my reactions to the film or why i, as a midwestern new southerner, am allowed to participate in the mourning of the "big easy." but i would like to think about how my reaction bespeaks something complicated and deeply profound about the hold new orleans has on the national imagination. and why in this particular moment, i would like to acknowledge how new orleans, its history, and its residents, have shaped each and every one of us, whether we've walked its streets pre/post katrina or not.