Only time Can Know You

The Flagship Newsletter

Thanks to new patrons Becca, Emily, Jay, Divyanka, Elle, and J. Medina for becoming premium members since my last shoutout. You’re the wind beneath my wings.

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Today’s post is about a national tragedy.

Hurricane Katrina: this week marks the 20th anniversary of the storm and various societal failures that upended my beloved New Orleans, as well as a good chunk of the Gulf South. I’ve written plenty of articles over the years about Katrina and the gentrification that crushed my city in its wake. Here are some:

The Taking of Freret Street

L.A. Times: The Hurricanes of Houston and New Orleans

Why we come back after these storms.

Unfathomable City: Gentrification Essay

A new documentary on Katrina. I’m not in it, but friend-of-the-newsletter and Whiting Award winner, Karisma Price, is featured reading one of her incredible poems.

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I could have written something today about my personal experience fleeing the storm with my family. Or about everything we did to pick our lives up afterwards. But I’ve done that before and don’t want to be basic or repetitive.

Instead, I want to share what Katrina did for me as a writer.

For as long as I can remember, I felt “different,” “special,” “odd.” I was assigned to gifted classes but rejected them because I don’t like being told what to do. I felt like I was a person of destiny and that one day I would do something aligned with those feelings. None of this is strange for creative types. I’ve watched a million biographies and asked creatives in one-on-one conversation. Most of us feel a little touched or a little chosen. Or a lot.

The problem is that society isn’t exactly begging for another novelist or poet or actress. People love good art when they see it, but they don’t always understand that the weirdo talking to herself is working out character voices and not mentally deranged. Authors are especially prone to feeling confused, cringe, incompetent, irritated, and directionless. Many of us rattle around as lost souls as the world turns. Decades pass. Nothing gets made. Then it’s lights out.

Katrina took my house, my car, my Nintendo, but just like a country song played backwards, I got it all back thanks to prayers, FEMA checks, and the power of Johnny Cash’s baritone warble.

Still, I didn’t get back the photos I lost. This was before social media. There was no saving those glimpses of family history. I also lost much of the New Orleans that was my birthright. 100,000 African Americans were pushed out of the city. They did everything from deliver the mail and drive the streetcars to char-grill oysters at restaurants and play at Second Lines. Mostly, they lived their lives. After the storm, they lived those lives elsewhere.

Yet, Katrina taught me one important lesson. It showed me that everything you care about can evaporate overnight. That life is shorter than you think. That if you want to make something, you better get cracking before a billionaire comes along and drinks your milkshake up.

I set out a running, but I take my time Jerry Garcia sings in “A Friend of the Devil.” That’s me. I’m neither the friend nor Devil here. But I was already running and writing in earnest before Katrina happened. I would write while exiled to the uncivilized wilds of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After our return to New Orleans, I wrote while my contractor cousin laid baseboard in the kitchen.

I made a pact with myself to write and publish a book. I moved as fast as I could and it took me a quick 14 more years to get that book out.

Yet, I’m positive that without that terrible storm and the ridiculously uncoordinated response to it, I’d have remained comfortable as a corporate lawyer, writing briefs about blah blah blah.

Katrina changed all us New Orleanians. I’m just one of many. It also brought in a bunch of new New Orleanians, many of whom I’m lucky to call friends.

If you know a New Orleans person, this would be a great week to tell them “hi,” let them know you’re thinking of them, tell them that you care.

And God rest those who didn’t make it through.