It's not just a party

It’s also not just a ritual. And Mardi Gras certainly doesn’t have to be one of those things, and it can be more then those things, depending on who you ask. It’s also not just one day, nor is it one kind of experience, but it is one collective dream illusion, no matter who you are. In fact, we are always living in a dream, just sometimes it's easier to see. The fantastic fantasy of this other world bursts forward with marked intensity until we climax at the throws of surrender, pouring our creativity and our bodies into the wild streets muddled with glitter and every possible resource of tactile stimulation. And perhaps at the crux of this, in my limited estimation, is that we put our masks on so we can see each other better.

So now, on this day, Ash Wednesday, with the season officially closed, I am feeling brave enough to take on this impossible imperfect task of writing about Carnival.

I don’t even know where to begin so I’ll just start anywhere. The thing I feel most confident to say about Carnival is that it is a practice. It’s a practice of endurance, pacing, releasing, surrender, politics, costuming, footwear, patience, pushing, and self-care. It’s also a practice in flow: the epic sea-flow of energy streaming in and out of your consciousness, of washing sensory stimulation, of deep spiritual acceptance, of dead-pan confrontation, and a visual psychic journey of the publics self-awareness. Carnival holds racism and climate change, waste, existential and physical purging, excess, poverty, contradiction. Carnival holds mystery, straight forward social norms, deceit, harm, death, denial, sweetness, sex, marriage, divorce, tears of joy and grief in one. In short, Carnival holds everything.

After almost a decade in a place where this wander exists, I admit it took many years before I really saw the sad-face alongside the happy time of year. The Carnival masks say it all but I either chose to ignore it, or my ignorance was too strong to see it. Either way, for me it is both laughter and tears. And for many years I thought my tears were a sign of moral defeat and used it for self-recrimination. Once I began to embrace the whole kaleidoscope of experiences I slowly began unfolding more into the great unknown of this experience. It’s a time when I get to see myself more clearly, both good and bad. It’s a time when time moves differently, sometimes spiraling into tiny circles, and sometime widening into great miracles.

And if I’m being too vague for you to understand, it is only because you haven’t been here. Please don’t take that as in insult. It is difficult to describe the ineffable. But let me try a little harder to land.

Mardi Gras is just a day, Fat Tuesday, which is 40 days before Easter Sunday and follows the cycles of the moon. Carnival Season begins 12 days after Christmas, Twelfth Night, and coincides with Joan of Arcs birthday. Between Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras is can be anywhere from one to two months of parades in the streets, with the real intensity building up the weekend before it all ends. In my summation, there are uptown parades, downtown parades, and underground parades. Each has their own flavor, and sometimes they are like fractal-ized spinoffs of one another, competing and rearranging to suit their needs. I say all this as if someone is in charge. But really, even if they city had a reminder on their calendar to put out the barricades and schedule trash pick-up, the whole city turns up-side down with barely a hit of order.. as if there is much of that to begin with in New Orleans.

Each year you know its officially Carnival because the King Cakes roll out and the stores quickly dry out of hot-glue. Plastic beads begin collecting in the gutters even before the glitter. Often there is a collective sigh and a scramble to understand what kind of year you’d like to have. Stay home? Go away? Dive in? Is temperance the word of the hour? Even if you choose not to participate it is a well thought-out choice and sometimes a political statement. Even if you don’t care about any of it, you are still part of the collective bargaining of the season. Even if you are behind the scenes, you will confront the aftermath, the present-math and the post-math of Mardi Gras. The front line workers take on the biggest burden: hospitals, hospitality workers, sanitation collectors. Each industry doing what it can to keep the city and culture and humans alive. It’s no small task, as invisible jobs often are not. It takes a village to create a village, and it takes a huge amount of resources to fuel the collective illusion of reality.

But also the illusion serves as a highlighter for greater awareness. In all the revelry there are just so many versions of reality. Carnival is practiced black-out drugged to deeply sober and every combination in-between. I have personally worked through the gambit. These days a quick micro-dose is all it takes to enhance my experience just enough to be swallowed a little deeper into gratitude. For me the ritual is in the giving thanks, in the open-eyed spectacle of seeing it all, in the blasted-out indulgence of sensory delight. I don’t need a lot of extra. My sober faculties partake are enough and anything on top would serve as a reminder to forget, and I want to inscribe the details of this time onto the back of my mind so that I may live a thousand lifetimes on the memory of a day alone. I can’t do that in a drug addled stupor. But that’s just me.

Expanded awareness keeps going and it doesn’t take long before you notice the not-so-subtle differences of racial culture in America. The schism of white-hooded faces of white men on floats carelessly throwing out coins and trash to the on-lookers below, to the black-face Black folks with painted coconuts, to the (at this point) largely white transplants with their over-the-top costumes that simmer and shine, its hard to know how to point your culturally sensitive and politically ethical stare. Right and wrong perhaps don’t live here and this is just a smattering of the varieties of festive fanfare. But still, I can’t help but question one’s reality when the white folks show up in Indian headgear. Really? In 2023?

There are distinct cultures that have been born here, largely through the Black Indigenous people of color who have sculpted and shaped the landscape for a century or few . The rest of us coming to this land are mostly donning tradition that has come before. With that in mind it would be impossible to not give a huge nod to the great, great Mardi Gras Indians who continually create costumes so grand you can’t help but humbly bow to their works of art. Every year suits are made with feathers and beads, tellings stories, representing families, and weighting sometimes many, many 10's of pounds. The Indians parade in the streets, unraveling whole narratives and games, with Spy Boys and song, dancing, and an Indian Chef’s power. This tradition of parading and Second Lines is what gave birth to everyone else taking over streets and signposts and sometimes truck beds and rooftops. The Indians, the Black culture, the roots in Africa gave rise to all the rest of us. Let’s take a moment to feel that in our body.

So is it a ritual or is it a party? And I wonder if there is a difference at all. This turn in the year is a chance to release, to collectively sing in the streets, to pound drums or feet, to set intentions, to escape responsibility, to refresh and to collapse, to marvel and question, to reflect, reconnection, and reconcile with old loves, platonic is otherwise. It is also a time to see where your alliances are. To find out who are friends, who gets closer, who is misplaced in the fold, who becomes unseen, who falls apart. All this in a days jaunt. The elastic thread of magic becomes so pointedly clear while stomping through the streets wearing monster garb. I have to let out a sigh of ridiculousness when I have an awkward encounter wearing silver mirrored stickers on my face. It’s hard to take any of it serious, and yet it expands my field on awareness to recognize how we are all in this together. We are all being consumed by the trite and terrible beliefs that we do not belong, that somehow our differences matter, that our defaults of character makes us an outsider. But we are all in this together, in this chaotic swirling organized dance called Carnival. The syncopated rhythms of life on Earth work better as you show our real colors, authentically speak to what matters, as you “do what ya wanna,” as you participate in anyway you know how, as you give what you receive whether that is hand-made throws (gifts to give), compliments, statements on your sleeve, or simply bringing one more body to the bar.

But on that note, I want to end with grief, because, in my opinion, no conversation about Carnival is complete without it. As we know praise we know sorrow. Each blossom of love contains the heartache of loss, maybe soon, maybe later, but always it will come. As we dance together in the ritual song of this season it’s important to remember all that is gone. We get to revel because we have also known quiet solitude, or the death of a lover, or the sorrow of watching our oceans fade, or the war in Ukraine, or the Earthquake in Turkey and Syria. As they say, everywhere else it is just Tuesday, but here we get to pour our grief out, even just a little, because if we don’t we might go mad. We need to shake that despair from our bones and cry in the street as we take over and feel our collective power. We need to remember that life can be unbelievably beautiful as a marching band plays your favorite song and your friends gather and everyone is in a wild frenzy of whatever they want. It’s so important to remember spirit this time of year because spirit is life, and Carnival and Mardi Gras will not let us forget we are alive.

Thank you for taking the time to read. This is a wildly incomplete picture of what it means to experience Carnival. Please feel free to share your thoughts, your perspectives, and anything else that can be added to this tapestry of experience.