Josh, 10th grade

Walking around New Orleans was almost exactly how I imagined it. Humid, sticky, and there was always music playing somewhere, but not all the music was jazz, because when we walked into an old catholic church, the jazz musicians outside became muted, and all I heard was a choir. After we had left the church, most of the group went shopping around the area, but Don Juetten and I stayed around the park and met a painter who told us about the stories behind a few of his paintings, one of which included a “jazz funeral” which is a kind of tradition whenever someone well-known passes away. At the funeral, they play mostly slower tunes, but after the family leaves, the band goes down the streets playing loudly in a sort of celebration. I’m still not sure how exactly to describe it, but it’s an interesting tradition.  

Being myself, I thought that the people I met on the street were more impactful to me than some of the speakers. What immediately comes to mind is a homeless man that had found humor in one of his lowest points: his cardboard sign wasn’t asking for money, it said “private jet needs fuel” so I stopped and got to know him a little, and he was really nice, even though his tough times. Going on a tangent, homeless people usually end up being some of the nicest people, because it’s never just “thank you” you’ll always get a bunch that say “someone else needs it more” and those people have my infinite respect. 

In all, what I saw in New Orleans was an unorganized mess of everything: food, music, cultures, religions, and in the very middle, some of the nicest people I’ve met outside of Wisconsin. I’m not the best writer, so I let my brain take the day off and wrote this from my heart and soul, just like all the greatest jazz musicians did, so you can call this my best improv solo to date.