(Editor’s note: Since the summer of 2008, Dominic Laing has made three trips to New Orleans, La., for Katrina relief efforts, and will spend this Thanksgiving holiday there as well. Below is a glimpse of New Orleans, what he’s experienced, and what’s ahead for the Crescent City. At the bottom of the page is a short documentary, Psalm Five Oh Four, shot by Laing during the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.)

Faith, Hope And NOLA

“If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom.” — Judy Deck
There is the United States of America.
There is the South.
There is Louisiana.
And then there is New Orleans.
May Seventh, Seventeen-Eighteen.
La Nouvelle-Orléans.
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville and
The French Mississippi Company.
My life. My love. My city. My home.
I was born in San Jose, California. But I came alive in New Orleans.
Her story cannot be forgotten, and her voice must never be silenced.
She struts and sings, dances and screams for help.
Purple, green and gold, my love is beautiful and bold
and she’s drowning on August Twenty-Ninth, Two-Thousand and Five.
She’s drowning on August Thirtieth.
She’s drowning on August Thirty-First.
She’s drowning on September First, Second and Third
because there is no FEMA, no food, and no President for “refugees.”
Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast, and
houses in the Lower Ninth Ward are inundated with over nine feet of water
and levees break
and the roof of the Superdome tears open
and Interstates Ten and Ninety fall into the ocean.
My heart is broken and her streets are flooding.
Eighty percent of my heart is underwater and I don’t know what to do.
They’re dying because they’re trapped in the attic.
Because the walls were supposed to hold.
New Orleans wails and mourns
and prevails and scorns those who wish her dead,
who wish to forget her and bury her under the waters.
The world could not go on without New Orleans, kicking and screaming since that wonderful seventh of May.
And those who’ve fallen in love with the city know that, and so we rebuild.
We play for keeps and we play for resurrection.
In my dreams it’s raining, and the waves are rushing
Lake Pontchatrain steel blue crush.
Then I see black Moses with trumpet armed, my Fat Tuesday miracle.
Suit black as night wrapped tight
the spirit of fiery New Orleans might fight and might right these wrongs;
might take, might make this broken city strong. Again.
You hope and you pray and you realize God loves New Orleans.
God didn’t flood the Lower Ninth Ward.
You’re mixing up God and the Corps of Engineers.
You set your hands on the heart of this city and you tell God
“Open my eyes—“
And He crushes you.
Miss Linda Lewis finds her brother dead in his home. She was under the false assumption that he’d evacuated. Her van has no middle seat because she took it out to make room for her belongings and Katrina washed it away. She drives through Orleans Parish and we are years beyond the storm and it looks it happened yesterday. “We ain’t back,” she says. “Not even close.”
Mister Warren is old and homeless. His eyes are bloodshot and he sleeps all day. He loves Motown; The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, The Supremes.
Tomorrow he sleeps against a park statue that looks like a hand. He sleeps there because he didn’t make it to the shelter in time and they ran out of beds.
Stephen Gonzales’ family has lived in St. Bernard Parish for two-hundred and thirty-seven years. He takes care of his feeble wife and escapes his house after it floods in a matter of minutes. In the twelve months after the storm, his wife loses strength and dies of a broken heart.
Lucas Russ laments his friends, gone because rent has tripled, because most everyone packed into a bus in September of two-thousand-and-five was given a one-way ticket and they didn’t know where they were going, and they weren’t told how to get back. His friends don’t know how to get back to the city they love. They don’t see houses in which to live, schools in which to send their children, or jobs in which to work.
“The only way to get back into New Orleans is to die. They can’t feed you, clothe you or house you, but they can damn sure bury you.”
“I wonder how man can build a spaceship and walk on the moon, but he can’t fix the levees.”
“Ain’t nothing changing but the time on their watch.”
“It’s hard…It’s hard…”
And now you throw up your hands, and with it all the love and hate and rage and confusion and despair and wonder and awe and fury inside of you.
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani, you asshole? What did they ever do to you?
You are in the wind you are in the whisper, but right now I feel that neither is doing much good. And I’m sorry…but actually, I’m not.
I’m angry that things are still like this. I’m angry things have not changed.
In my dreams the Lower Ninth Ward is the Red Sea,
giant jazz-blasting away water and past.
In my dreams there is resurrection and healing.
And in this hopeless moment, I feel the wind.
In this darkest hour, I hear the music.
And I hear His whisper. I hear His love.
A Love Supreme at all costs.
It swoons and sorrows and rises and beats back the night.
God’s love and Christ himself buddy, bringing the Saints who come marching in.
Hot heat in the hot hall,
small hall smoke-filled sweat beads
sink down purple green and gold light
moonlight packed in
to-night
for the Preservation Jazz,
for the four on the floor, St. Peter Street Serenaders Preservation Jazz.
To preserve and protect
to reflect the shining light of the all night so right so tight New Orleans,
REnew REvive REstore
for man is more than wind and water.
Man is greater than hurricane weather,
and whether or not you believe it
you and I will build this home together
and we will sleep in its bed
and rest our collective head on its pillow
and we will have to think about what we’ve done together.
And music is made together.
The trumpet machine-gunning
on the skins a drum-drumming,
the piano keys dancing
ebony ivory tossing back sharps and flats
crescendo crashing smashing into a beautiful New with
bass line heart-thumping
and the voices of the saints be calling us home.
The saints go march
go round and call out and shout out and belt out and break out
and bust out and bust down barriers,
treble and bass, economy and race,
whatever lines lie between you and me
they lie to us
about who we ought to trust and these lines
these lies
they push us apart.
But when we step through the doors of the Preservation…
we.
are.
Together.
Because Together is what we are called to be.
We are St. James Infirmed,
and in the sweltering night the healing will come.
The music will come and save our souls.
God won’t you bless the Preservation…
I love this city at all costs and at all potential for criticism.
I will show you a city the likes of which you have never seen.
It is the greatest show on earth, the greatest tragic, x-on-the-door, feet-on-the-shore-mississippi-satchel-mouth-heart-as-big-as-the-crescent-moon show on earth.
Watch because something’s happening. New Orleans is turning a corner. Because people care enough to love the city and love the people and love what it means to be New Orleanian. This is the love that wraps around the whole world and teaches the rookies how to second-line.
Jesus Christ is my mighty-mighty Mardi Gras Chief,
united-as-one-Lake-Pontchatrain-son.
New Orleans, Louisiana. Bonjour, mon ami. Where y’at, baby?
Now recruiting for the New Orleans Five-Oh-Four Armored Division.
Must know how to:
Play trombone, drums, trumpet, clarinet, tuba, saxophone and guitar.
Cook Gumbo, Étoufée, Crawfish, Catfish, Crayfish, Shrimp, Lobster, Po-Boy, Atchafalaya, Muffulettas.
Sing, dance, smoke, drink, pray, love, love, love and never give up.
My life. My love. My city. My home. Laissez les bons temps rouler. Let the good times roll and roll and evermore roll. God Bless New Orleans.