I love New Orleans. I mean really
love it. I love all the stuff everyone else loves: music, food, ambience, people, history….the whole nine yards. And I, like most people who have spent time there, have a lot of my own special memories that keep me romancing the place in my mind and my vision.
This afternoon my time when the Saints take on the Indianapolis Colts machine in Super Bowl LXIV in Miami, I will be hoping and praying and meditating and mojo-ing for them to beat the tar out of the smart-alec, technocratic Peyton Manning bunch. I really will. I've scoured the Web and found a few intrepid souls who think the Saints might not only have a realistic shot today but that they might even win this one.
But I'm suspicious that the Colts will prove too much for my second-favorite football team on the planet. "Whodat" is likely to turn into "Who WAS that?"
In many ways, this game epitomizes the numerous dichotomies in our American culture. It's the efficient technocrats against a bunch of "just guys" whose style is more freelance. It's the perennial and historical winners against the perennial and hysterical losers. It's regimented Sousa marches against invisibly disciplined jazz. It's method vs. passion.
If I've learned anything fundamental about America's socio-political makeup in the past decade, it is that as a people we seem to prefer streamlined, passionless bureaucratic efficiency over the sometimes messy and undisciplined serendipity of the impassioned compassionate leader who somehow manages to do the Right Thing almost accidentally. We prefer predictability over surprise, clear-cut "good" and "bad" guys in a world of infinite shades of gray.
In that world, my Saints don't have a chance. But I hold out one hope and that is that the power of hope and joy and love and bliss and belief can and sometimes does overcome the ruthless efficiency of the Machine. If that happens today, you can be sure of one thing: I'll be shouting and screaming and doing what passes for dancing in my life. If the likely outcome comes out, though, I'll congratulate the Colts and tune in on TV Tuesday when the Saints have their Super Bowl win-or-lose-because-we-love-you parade in the Big Easy. Meanwhile, I'm going to see if I can find a recipe for white chocolate bread pudding like they make at The Palace in the Quarter and put on a little Terrence Blanchard.
Y'all enjoy.
Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous
