I Traveled to New Orleans and I Didn't Write
On the ways we find inspiration in different lands
On a windy Thursday in New Orleans last week, I left my hotel room and began to walk to grab a cup of coffee. My husband was finishing up at his work conference and I had some time to myself. I Googled the closest coffee shop near me, grabbed my journal, and set off toward “Hot Benny’s.”
I sat down with my pile of warm pastry and mountains of powdered sugar (beignets are delightful and it’s a crime that they aren’t more popular elsewhere). I opened my journal to a clean page.
And this is what I wrote:
Rich, sweet coffee. Thick,
doughy beignet doused in powdered
sugar. They are sweet and savory and pillowy. I love the exact temperature
of warmth, taken right at the exact moment.
I feel the powdered sugar all over
me, wind whipping through my hair.
Cars scream past, people walk by in garish sparkles and purple, yellow,
and green. This city is sweet
doughy chaos.
[Writer’s note: sharing an absolute nonsense rough draft from my journal might be one of the more vulnerable things I’ve done in my writing life but here we are]
And that, dear reader, is the only thing I wrote my entire trip.
I write to understand myself better and stabilize myself in this world. I want to understand myself here in the Midwest and I want to understand myself everywhere else. There’s such romance in the idea of writing while traveling, understanding who you become when you find yourself somewhere new.
I sat down to write this essay to understand why I didn’t find inspiration to write in New Orleans. But I immediately became bored of the question. I know exactly why I didn’t find inspiration to write on my trip, surrounded by people everywhere the constant aura of abandon. Garish clothing everywhere I looked and the feeling that the city was just one big stage upon which everyone played dress up. It was not the quiet I need to feel creative.
What I wanted was to feel moved by the millions of souls who have lived and died and swam through the flood water. To touch each culture that had called New Orleans home and create something that would become my own. Maybe I could have found that had we not arrived during the season where spectacle outweighs introspection.
My favorite moments were walking down the streets of the French Quarter with my husband. Our necks permanently bent skyward as we took in the French architecture, a mix of pastel colors and intricate wrought-iron galleries, expecting an 18th-century maiden to call down to her children at any moment. Someone told us this was the closest you could get to a European city in America. I have no clue if that’s true but I believe him.
We stopped by one building in particular that made us both catch our breath. My husband and I, we don’t often have interest in the same things. I love books and writing and bingeing comedy podcasts. He loves motorsports and rock music and long movies. But we appreciate the similar beauty in many things, like a perfect 3-point shot from Caitlin Clark, the heat of our cats curled up between our legs, and this building on the corner of a busy street in New Orleans.
So as I write this essay and think about the moment my husband and I synchronously stopped to admire a building, I am so glad I traveled to New Orleans and I didn’t write. I ate amazing food and met kind people and adored the beautiful and tragic history of a stunning place with my husband. I didn’t write. I saw the house where Ann Rice wrote “Interview With a Vampire” and danced to a killer cover band and saw the end of the Mississippi River. I didn’t write. I smiled a ton and stood feet away from an alligator and saw my husband’s eyes light up and I still didn’t write.
But I’m writing now. And I’m home with my husband while we snuggle our cats. And I’m sharing recommendations with my sister and my boss who are both traveling to New Orleans soon and I’m reminiscing on my honeymoon and I’m calling my dad on his birthday and I’m writing. Maybe I’m not describing the cemetery we toured or the person who invited us to the back of his restaurant to see the crawfish he planned on boiling that night or the couple from Wisconsin who bought us shots at the bar or the jazz performer outside of Cafe du Monde. But maybe traveling and writing aren’t always about the stories you pick up but the way you tell stories after the fact. I sat down to write this essay about how I didn’t write in New Orleans but now I’m in Iowa and I’m writing and I’m thinking about the ways we exist when we leave our homes. I’m thinking about the trips I might take someday where I’ll hopefully write and maybe it’s the act of examining all of this that’s the point of this little writing life of mine.
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