Desire
December 28, 2005 by nonotes
When I visited N.O. in October, I drove over to the Desire projects, which I guess have a new name now. These were the projects in the piece called “The Desire Line” in the book. Apparently the teardown was completed, and some new construction had started, but now it’s a bit of a shambles again. The flooding was quite bad there. I drove around the desolate neighborhood for a while after that. There was no one around, not even a stray dog. It was eerie, and it was sad. I took a few pictures, and then I stopped, because really no picture can capture what it was like.
A couple of years ago I did some research into the song "St. James Infirmary," wrote up what I found, emailed that essay to friends and posted it on my web site (as part of a series of "Letters From New Orleans," as I was living in that city at the time). Based on the feedback, I wrote a second version of the essay, and asked for more feedback. Based on that, I wrote a 
