Surrealism

Yesterday for me was mostly spent wandering aimlessly around the French Quarter and Canal st. by myself. It was hot and I was bored and without a house key. Most of the people I ran into were drunken tourists and sparked no interest in conversation for me. In the evening though I did get to watch a homeless man sing to a very sketched out couple of the waterfront. It was really amusing.

Back closer to the house I tried to make friends with some anarchist kids who were selling art on the street corner. They both knew Amanda. I talked with them for a bit but no conversation got going and we ended up sitting in an awkward silence for awhile. Eventually Amanda came back from work, gave me the keys, and left again to go out with some friends from work. Not yet tired and determined to make one last loop around Frenchman ave. in the hopes of meeting people I did just that. When I was about to give up I passed an slightly bearded guy who was not much older than I. His name was Dylan and him and his friend Jeff were biking from DC to Northern California. They were hanging out with a bunch of French kids, a Spanish girl, and a British girl they met at their hostel. They were all incredibly friendly and Dylan bought me a drink in celebration of our meeting. Being a lover of Reggae they were all hanging out/dancing in the Bob Marley themed bar across the street. Eventually though this got old. Dylan stayed, a few went to listen to Jazz at The Spotted Cat but I was intrigued by the others talk of a "tree house party." Hearing about this from these two guys that someone had met we (Jeff, I, the French kids, the Spanish girl, and these 2 newcomers) set off about 8 blocks down one of the main roads. I soon realized what they meant by "tree house." The colossus resided in the backyard of what is known as the NOLA Art House, which is some kind of communal living art collective. One of there projects, which has slowly been added onto over the years, is a tree house in their back yard the size of a 3 story house. It sports long rope walkways, a pool, slides and other pieces hat seem to have come from a McDonald's children playground, and xmas lights wrapped about the entire thing.





There were plenty of other strange sculptures and structures but this was obviously the most captivating. The house itself was bizarre too. I'm not sure how many people actually live there but I met 4 of them last night. Every wall has something painted on it, some of the door knobs have been replaced by mannequin hands, one living room wall had drum cymbals bolted all over it, and there were crazy pieces of art lying everywhere. Not to mention a few cockroaches. The whole experience was incredibly surreal, and at first I was a little uneasy, but everyone that I met was nice, if not strange, and I was quickly put at ease.
I exchanged emails and phone numbers with a few of the people, making tentative plans to see each other again before we went out separate ways.