You are not my typewriter
Last night, we went to go hear a friend read his poetry at the 1718 Club at the Columns Hotel. And it was everything that a reading inside the parlor in a mansion on St. Charles should be.
We were enclosed in a small room that was long and narrow, framed by perfectly square windows that were hugged loosely by thick, velvet curtains that were stained with antiquity and probably, if you would have gotten close enough, would have smelled tremendously heavy. A chandelier hung from the center, its myriad glass globes stained with classic brown discoloration. It smelled like wine and potpourri and oak trees that have been saturated by a recent rainstorm. People wearing glasses and tight pants and v-necks were reading poems about deeply metaphorical things, employing so many tangled euphemisms and symbols that it was much easier to hear them than to really, truly listen to their voices. There were concave windows that brought the outside garden inside to us, warping the simple elegance into some kind of meta thing. We were closed off from the bar by overwhelming doors; but through them, drifted the sounds of trumpets and laughter, both deep and entirely sufficient on their own to characterize the kind of cliched pleasure that happens in rooms “next door.” The furniture was fragile, the lamps had lavish shades and the legs on the tables all flared out with carved little fingers and toes.
Maybe it wasn’t accurately representative of the south, maybe we were too insulated in the age-old elegance of solid mahogany doors and Queen Anne designs and red wine from the realities of southern Louisiana. Maybe we were in this little bubble. But that comforting feeling of finding yourself feeling the feelings that you’re supposed to be feeling, of being drunk with the ambiance of the acute present — that’s what I felt yesterday. And it’s an extraordinarily under appreciated mentality.
