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There’s a question of dueling perspective going on after the premiere on Sunday, namely:  “how will people from New Orleans take it”, vs. “how will people outside New Orleans take it?”  How we answer those questions depends in part with our relationship to the concept of home.  Not as in house, although we’ll get to that later.  I mean home, as in how we answer the questions “where are you from?” “Where are your people?”  and others that get at a deep sense of place.

This is a concept that I’ve been interested in simply because I’m a military kid/global nomad.  I’m the kind who answers the “where are you from?” question with another question (you mean originally?), or a long involved explanation, or a fatigued, “ummmm.”  (If anyone’s curious, I was born in NC, lived there 2 years, moved all over, graduated from high school in Italy, went to college back in NC, moved around, went to grad school in WY {of all random places} and have now lived in Seattle for nearly 10 years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere.)  I contrast this with a story from a friend of mine who did reconstruction work in New Orleans two years ago.  The home he worked on was owned by a woman in her eighties, who was the third generation to live in that home.  Her parents lived there and her grandparents lived there.  That’s just so beyond what many of us can understand about home.  Even my grandparents moved from house to house within the same general area in NC.

This is what Lolis Eric Elie gets at so wonderfully in his documentary Faubourg Treme (linked right).   He calls Treme a deeply rooted neighborhood, and then shows us what he means by that.  And what a neighborhood to be rooted to: the first black neighborhood in the US, the place where free blacks created community, owned property, founded newspapers, and thrived in business.  It makes the subsequent losses after Reconstruction and in the current times all the more tragic.  This is also the point of Tom Piazza's Why New Orleans Matters, writ a little bit larger.

So how does our concept of home relate to our viewing of Treme?  Let’s use a house as a metaphor.  If we think of NOLAns as the home owners, we have some who invite us in, but the couch is covered in plastic.  They say to us, “don’t touch anything!”  Things are the way they are, maybe not perfect, but they are immutable.  Of course perfection is unattainable, but certainly the outsider is not permitted any license to change or interact with anything.  This is the POV view of those who say that the show Treme does not get it, will not get it, and should not have even tried.

We also have those who invite us in, and tell us to make ourselves at home.  “There’s sweet tea in the fridge, whenever you want it!” Oh, get comfortable, they tell us.  “You like that picture?  I got it last year, let me tell you about it!”  The outsider feels welcome, and feels part of the home we’ve been invited to enter.  This is the POV of those who look at the show as a way to introduce, to acquaint, and to educate a little.  This is what we’ve got, hope you like it! They seem to say.

The outsider has their own POV.  “I don’t get it.  Why is he dressed like Big Bird?”  Too slow.  Too many characters.  Stopped too much for music.  What an annoying hipster. Their concept of someone’s home is that it’s the “other.” Not theirs, so they don’t get it. They’re invited in, but they don’t stay too long.  (A friend of mine always drives his own car to any party or gathering so he can leave whenever he wants, unencumbered by a carpool or public transit schedule.)

Or the outsider can approach with curiosity.  Does the home fit the characters inside?  What can we know about them?  Are they artsy?  Do they listen to the same music that I do?  I think the outsider who looks not only for points of similarity, but who revels in what they perceive as truly odd, has a unique relationship with someone else’s home.  This is the majority of what I’m seeing on Twitter, on blogs, and elsewhere.  HBO has opened the door, and most of us are happy to wander around inside, kick off our shoes, and bop our heads to the music.   We won’t understand it all.  We don’t know the story behind that family picture in the hall.  But we can still admire it for what it is, part of what belongs.

Ihave to perfect the image in my head of the metaphor with Kermit out back at his barbeque…