New Orleans

 
Among the many virtues of Rod Taylor as an actor, he could speak French. This meant that he appeared as a native son when he played the manager of St. Gregory, an old fashioned New Orleans hotel in the grand style, in the 1967 Richard Quine film simply called 'Hotel'. He finds a natural affinity with the terribly beautiful Catherine Spaak, the girl from Paris. It would be fascinating to find out how French culture influences North America. Just as interesting also to look at how southern United States relates to Cuba. Fidel Castro, one believes, was much loved in Cuba and his passing is that of a paternal figure for Cubans and yet in Miami loud cheers went up at the news. This is regrettable perhaps but enmities have not been forgotten and an exiled people, perhaps without any intentions of returning, vent their hatred for the last time. May peace reign strong on the troubled island.

New Orleans, Louisiana, is famous for many things. The obvious one is Jazz. The older stuff with the brass bands has a unique sound quite unlike any other kind of music. Just so we can comprehend its essential feeling, let's think of the easy piece, 'When the Saints go Marching in'.

O when the saints go marching in, O when the saints go marching in.
I want to be in that number, O when the saints go marching in.

The beat goes right to the brain, something starts to repeat and the whole body is induced into a dancing mode until the rational man starts to reject the tribalism and goes cool. Jazz travels to Chicago and New York transforming its audience into left wing beatniks enjoying their own wits by comparing Keats with Charlie Parker.

Women fit in there like oil with salad. Men want them, pay for them. The clubs where they play jazz all night live off the loose change of such deep desires. Orchestrating fun makes the rules in this city, otherwise why bother to have a city at all? To which form of happiness do sophistications lead? The carthasis is in the heat, the hot food, the bourbon, the shaky conversations between the flesh bumping flesh amongs the palm trees in the balmy nightplaces where trumpters jam with soprano singers. It is a pity that St Gregory's had to close but by 1967, that part of the sixties that hung on to the old world was gone. Rock and Roll was here and with it a whole new pumped up economy took over. Cuba had suddenly stopped importing cars from America some years before. As if to prove a point that the less refined the technology the more it must be durable, the Cubans, in their wonderfully anachronistic spirit, kept on owning, repairing, restoring and using these same cars for all these years right up till now.  - ROMA, 26 11 2016