Beasts of the Southern Wild

NEW IBERIA, LOUISIANA – We attended the International Music Festival in Lafayette last evening (Friday), and, after checking out the vast scene—it’s the 29^th annual and collects a huge crowd from around the world, a great many of them quite unusual—we settled in to watch a premier local act, The Lost Bayou Ramblers, roll out their fusion of Cajun and Pop. Great music, once again. We got good seats on the steps of the US Courthouse, and a local young man sat down there too. Pretty soon we were talking and when we described what we were doing, he looked at us and said, “Oh, I see, a bucket list trip.” We did not reply; just looked at each other and thought OMG. Is that what we’re doing?!

Lost Bayou Ramblers

The Ramblers’ music was part of the sound track for “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which we believe is one of the greatest movies ever made, bringing together as it does a fight against global warming, a struggle to save a family and a marginalized community, and an attack on the barriers the 1% have built to protect themselves but not others.

In a memorable scene, the Aurochs, fierce ancient animals, have been freed from the melting prehistoric ice and now roaming the earth, have arrived in southern Louisiana at the spot where the story’s lead character, Hushpuppy, and her family and community live and struggle.

As these very large and seemingly vicious creatures approach, Hushpuppy, a six-year old black girl, goes out to meet—actually confront—them. The lead Auroch and Hushpuppy stand there looking each other in the eye. And what we see in the Auroch’s eye, as it looks at this little girl so full of innocence and commitment and fight, is not menace but respect and awe and, indeed, reverence. And in a show of their knowledge that she is the center of great struggles and inner strength, they kneel. The wild beasts unleashed by climate change kneel before her in reverence. If this were a work of nonfiction and the site of the confrontation could be found, local people would declare the site sacred and erect something there.

On our trip to Lafayette yesterday we also went by St. Martinville, a lovely little town that is the center of the region’s celebration of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” the long poem that describes the Acadians’ (now Cajuns’) long journey to this region of Louisiana.

Before leaving on our short trip, we ate lunch at Victor’s Café in New Iberia, which is featured in James Lee Burke’s fiction, a favorite of his memorable character Dave Robicheaux. Interestingly, Gus asked for a second joint and they didn’t know what he was talking about. In addition to delicious fried chicken, Victor’s served a vast array of fresh vegetables—slaw, okra, tomatoes, beets, broccoli, carrots —and it forcefully occurred to us that for weeks we have been vegetable deprived!