Today Feels Like Love

Sunrise at St. Louis Cathedral

There is absolutely nothing in the world that matters to us today. And by that we mean that everything in the world matters way too much to us today. And by that we mean that we’re so in love with the beauty of New Orleans today that the only thing our hearts are capable of doing is loving everything and forgetting that things unworthy of love exist. Who knew a city could do that to you? But apparently it can because none of us can stop talking about it.

Thus, in honor of today, we would like to present you with an excerpt from Bob Dylan’s book Chronicles, Vol. 1, which perfectly encapsulates our current emotion toward our city.

Our lovely New Orleans.

Take it away, Bobby-boy…

"The city [New Orleans] is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.

Garden District mansion

Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place.

French Quarter at dusk

In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart...”

― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. 1

“Laissez les bon temps rouler”

          - The LOC Team

St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line