Sari Jordan
City Park, New Orleans
I met Sari Jordan through Gina Leslie. Jordan is a known, but not terribly common name, so I’m always excited to meet another one. Jordan means ‘running water’ or ‘to flow down’ and that’s why it’s the name of the river that runs into the sea of Galilee. It makes sense for a project of songs in tinyboats.
We met on the shores of a lake in City Park that surrounds ‘Scout Island.’ That April morning was warm, but not hot. The park is massive. It's got everything from art museums, horse barns, cafes, and ball fields to this little slice of bayou so robustly fecund that it is hard to tell where human hands have handed it over to Mother Nature. Birds abound, and gators lurk shyly. The wind rustled through cypresses and the leaves of sprawling oaks with twisting, spirally arms that embraced the land, air, and water around them. There was no boat ramp here, so I discretely muscled the boat down to the water.
Sari was finishing up her last year at Tulane, singing and playing all kinds of instruments. They chose a ukulele today because it’s always fitting to have a tiny instrument for a tinyboatsession. We talked a bit of New Orleans history, marveled at the city's complexity as those interested in this city are wont to do, and talked a bit about Richard Campanella, a geographer who teaches at the school of architecture at Tulane and one of the most prolific, popular, and recent writers about the cities complex history and geography.
We rowed around and looked for lovely spots in the sun or shade of the oaks and she sang along with wind and the oak leaves. find Sari: @Sarijjordan