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New Orleans’s Warehouse and Central Business District are the hottest spots for summer celebratory events, including the NOLA Downtown Music and Arts Festival, which celebrated its twenty-third year his August. This end of the summer cultural, musical, and artistic event is presented by the Cutting Edge C.E. Conference and the Music Business Institute (MBI), whose goal is to spread and broaden career opportunities to local musicians in the city. Artists and visitors flood the District from the World War II Museum, to the Contemporary Arts Center, and the Ogden Museum, as well as the historic hotels, famous street corners, and the oh so popular Saenger Theatre. These a locations are common destinations for everyone from business professionals to the everyday art lover. The event allows for musicians, artists, and the public to mingle in the most relaxed atmospheres.

Along with new artists, there were some fan favorites at this festival. One of the most talked about acts was the “Ain’t no party like a Chubby party!” featuring Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band. This band’s high energetic swamp funky zydeco sound blended enthusiastically with its ‘70s funk, rock and roll, blues, and that good-ole-school zydeco spice. Their music made even the shyest visitors move their feet. Another act fans couldn’t get enough of was the sultry sound of the illustrious Stephanie Jordan, who set a new jazz standard with her great set of pipes. Her performance included songs from Big Band Era with her own mix and style that highlighted her distinct and refreshing voice along with her beautiful poise. Another band, the electrifying Brass-A Hoil Gogo Brass Funk band, blended funk rhythm and blues and party Hip Hop to make everyone get on their feet and dance. Other favorite acts included Fire Bug, Grand Baton, Neckbone, Saul Paul, Gospel Soul Children, Davis Rogan, and the Black Market Butchers.

The festival would not have been complete without the other attractions, like food trucks, live films, shopping, and other unique presentations. Particularly, what draws people to the streets are the arts and craft vendors, selling everything from metal, wood, soaps, jewelry, leather, glass, beauty products, photography, ceramics, sculptures, paintings, handmade clothing, and accessories. The New Orleans Downtown Music and Arts Festival stretches from Andrew Higgins Drive and Diamond Street to Fulton Street and is a one of kind event that brings visitors from all around the world.

Tyrell Collins, Assistant Managing Editor

About three years ago, I began writing creative nonfiction, and in the first year, I wrote furiously. It seemed that each new essay achieved success in a new area that my previous essay had failed. I can remember the elation that welled inside of me. I’m really doing it I thought, I’m really a writer. Looking back on that work now, some of it is okay, much of it frivolous, and a few essays have good starts and simply require the revision and deference that almost two full years of grad school have taught me. However, one essay stands out in particular.

Amongst my files, there are actually several drafts of this one particular work, which is somewhat of a rarity of my fledgling writings. I would mostly write one draft and then edit it, make a few revisions, overwrite the file, and move on — this was enough to receive a higher grade on the revision in my workshops in undergrad. My final class in creative nonfiction really instilled in me what it meant to revise — that is, to re­write.

I’ve avoided admitting to the title of this initial accomplishment of mine that I’m particularly fond of. Even as I type it now, it makes me grimace; “Chopping Down the Dating Tree: Tiiiiiiinder!” Whatever could I have been thinking? Continue Reading

About four weeks into my first semester of college, I decided to write about the issue most pressing in my mind: overwhelming homesickness. It wasn’t a conscious obsession in the way that everything else I’d ever written about was; I didn’t choose to focus every hour of every day either reacting to my transition or analyzing every detail of it. It was the first time in my life that I was going through something that caused such a devastating sense of loss I couldn’t escape from. The worst I had gone through so far was a really horrible breakup in high school, and I was all too aware of my fortunate life. I had never dealt with family issues or the deaths of anyone really close to me.

I felt ashamed to tell people that the reason I struggled to participate in class the first few weeks was because I was trying not to cry due to the fact that I was in Chicago instead of my small hometown in central Michigan, the place where my family, friends, and significant other were. It was a bizarre and surreal time, one that a lot of people, myself included, found hard to understand.

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Recently, a man I’ve been seeing told me that he hasn’t mentioned me to his therapist.

“Things are going well,” he told me. “There’s nothing to say when the feelings are good. It’s the problems that need talking about.”

And I know exactly what he meant, because this perfectly encompasses the dilemma I have with writing. When I am happy, when things in my life are going well, I don’t feel the need to express that happiness to myself. I can just feel it, and enjoy it. It’s when things are not going well that thoughts pile up, waiting to be spilled onto a page. But even then, my expression usually forms itself as fiction. I shy away from any personal writing more cohesive than some melodramatic repetitive complaints scrawled across the back pages of a notebook.

For me, editing is far preferable to writing and comes much more naturally. I enjoy editing creative nonfiction more than other genres. I love to soak up people’s stories; whether or not they end up being deemed suitable for publication, I usually find something beautiful in the honesty of personal narratives, real voices, something meaningful in the little glimpses into people’s lives. I think to myself, “Everyone’s life is made up of stories, and at least one of those stories is worth telling.”

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I don’t cook. Not because I can’t, but because I believe there are so many people who are so much better at cooking than I am, that I’d rather pay them to create a meal for me, than muck around in the kitchen on the off-chance that I might create something half as good as a “real” cook.

I find I often don’t write for the same reason that I don’t cook. I love to read and after reading so many fantastic books by so many “real” writers I wonder, “why even bother writing when so many others do it so much better than I ever could?”

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Writing, for me, is a lot like music.

Writing has the same ingredients as a song—rhythm, pacing, flow, and lyrics. Reading something should feel like music to your ears.

There are countless of songs that bounce off our heads daily. It rings in our ears. It can act like a soundtrack to our lives. There are multiple things that can be written and have the same effect. Just like words, a song can stick, making a home for itself in our minds forever.

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During Christmastime when I was 14 years old, the boy I was dating was over at my house helping my family bake cookies. We had baked snickerdoodles and gingerbread, and we were moving on to my favorite peanut butter cookies. My boyfriend, Gary, was instructed to add the salt. These being cookies, the amount of salt called for by the recipe was quite minimal – one teaspoon for the batch. To anyone who had baked anything before, I’m sure this would have seemed like a normal amount. Gary, however, had apparently never baked anything before and somehow ended up adding an entire cup of salt to the cookie dough without my knowledge. The cookies were on a baking tray and ready to go into the oven when my younger sister, licking the spoon, complained the dough was way too salty. Gary was confronted, the truth came out, the dough was ruined with too much salt and we had to start over.

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