There must be some things about the spatial patterns of New Orleans that are different from the patterns of Chicago or Louisville or Sacramento. Preservation Hall demonstrates one such pattern: Standing outside the window, you look across the backs of the musicians to the audience, crowded into folding chairs and onto the floor of the simple space. For a few dollars, you can join the audience inside. You enter through a carriageway to the right of the storefront, pass down it to a door at the back of the room, turn, and sit facing the musicians—and, behind them, the window through which you had looked. You are “in.”
Looking in on a scene with its back to the front, seeing people like yourself beyond the scene looking back at you, finding your way into that scene through an extended passage with a final about-face, seeing the same scene from a privileged position: this scenario is characteristically New Orleanian.
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