South is Only a Home

I have a lot of scrap wood staring at me in my studio that I needed to figure out something to do with it.  No one wants to talk about making marketable art, especially not me. When I try to think about making things specifically to sell, I get painter's block or all I can come up with is the same cheesy things that I see in the French Quarter all the time. But this time, looking at the size of wood I had, I could envision southern flowers in a row.  In some ways it felt weird painting knowing that it wouldn't be staying in my studio, that someone was going to give me money for these and they'd go live with them.  The first few flowers I picked, azaleas, camellias, and magnolias, though, remind me of childhood. I grew up with azaleas and camellias all over our yard, I used to pick them and smash them in jars to make 'perfume'. I remember this magnolia tree on my way to our bus stop and letting my friend climb on my shoulders so we could pick it to bring to our teacher.  Jasmine and gardenias remind me of my walks around my neighborhood in New Orleans. Jasmine especially signals to me that it's springtime in NOLA. I started working on these paintings around the same time that so many of my friends who moved away were visiting in the same month that I'd be saying goodbye to another friend as well as my best friend coming home from being out of the country for almost a year.  These flowers--these simple little marketable art flowers, have become a reflection of what it means for me to stay here.

With so many of my close friends leaving or having left South Louisiana. People tend to ask me if I plan to move, too. When I say, quickly, 'no', they further inquire why.  Honestly, I don't completely know why. Most of the time, I feel like New Orleans is just a place like most other places. Of course, it's different in a lot of ways to the rest of the country. Day to day, though, it's very much the same. Get up, go to work, make enough money to pay bills and hopefully fund art while still giving yourself enough time to relax and do what you want.  South Louisiana seems better at this relaxing thing than most places. We tend to have a very laissez-faire attitude and an affinity for creating/sustaining free events to amuse ourselves.

Like most progressive people in the south, it can be overwhelming and heartbreaking at times. I understand my friends who leave because they need to find a safer place for themselves with more active communities. Sometimes I feel like I have to stay to be one of the people that works to make the south more inclusive and tolerant.  Truthfully though, I feel like an alien when I go anywhere outside of south Louisiana. I was born and raised in Lafayette, but I've always had family and friends all over the country. The only territory I've hardly been in is the midwest and I don't really feel a need to go there, either. So what is my attachment to the south? Is it just the first place to make me comfortable and I don't want to give that up?  I don't really know.

Moving to New Orleans 8 years ago was definitely a shake up, but not because the place itself or what I was doing was so different from growing up in Laffy.  I tend to be shy and passive as a defense mechanism until I get to know people. I get pretty socially anxious and I have trouble developing intimacy with people.  After about 5 years of living in this city, I finally felt like I had a good support network and was building relationships and communities for myself.  The idea of going to a new place and starting that process all over again overwhelms me. I was incredibly depressed when I first moved here (which was a combination of being in an abusive romantic relationship as well as moving stress) and I stopped creating things.  Being comfortable and feeling supported in a place helps me to be creative. But if most of that community I've built is leaving, what am I here for?

I could go on and on about the systemic issues that plague our state. How an extreme attachment to tradition and culture has made it hard for people here to evolve into more accepting beings. How the politicians feed the masses by claiming to be for the community/against big government but really they just want to be the highest up on this smaller scale. How tourism feeds so much of our economy that we cater more towards outsiders' perspectives of us than our own, which also stunts our growth as people.  That we'd rather accept funds from big oil companies than figure out how to sustain our gulf and swamps.  While the bigger things make me want to rip my hair out and eat it, the smaller communities make me feel safe. I tend to walk my dog around my neighborhood well into the late night; my neighbors know this and they watch out for me. I may not know all their names and they don't know mine, but they call me 'cher' and make sure I'm doing ok.

Kim Gordon in her book, Girl in a Band, talks about her nostalgia for the places she's lived, specifically L.A. and NYC, while knowing she couldn't really live there again because it's such a different place from her memories. I definitely feel this way about Lafayette and I think I would if I moved from New Orleans too. I met a woman on a flight recently who moved from Chicago, IL to Hattiesburg, MS. I asked her how she felt about living down here. She told me about how different it was but she also mentioned how different Chicago is from what she remembers too.  She talked about the people down here and how they're the nicest and most inviting people, who even when they know nothing about you, they'll invite you into their homes and try to feed you.  That's the thing about the South (at least down in South Louisiana), the reason we have so many systemic issues is because most people don't even understand how microaggressions feed into larger problems and they don't understand how damaging microaggressions are because no matter if they like you or not, they're going to look out for you. 

There was recently a confederate flag burning event in New Orleans and my friend, Tiffany, went and gave a speech. It's pretty powerful and reflects a lot of how I feel as a progressive white ciswoman growing up in the south.  There's a part that I really like where she talks about her initial impression of the flag as being about a "tradition of resistance". She goes on to speak about why the flag doesn't properly reflect this for all people of the south. Her statement made me think a lot about my own opinions of the south and why/how I can still like it so much while hating our system.  I think culturally we have a lot to offer each other. But I also think that I have a nostalgia for the south that I was taught about in school; for what I believed my home was. Now I want to work to make my home and community what I've believed in.

The top set of flowers was bought by my very best friend who is sticking out living and striving to make the South better with me.  The bottom set is with my baby sister (who I claimed as such in highschool).  It seems fitting for two people so close to me to have these now.