My hips were the gateway. It was the afternoon and I swerved my body listening to music. Music that held stories that my grandma , mama, and aunts shared about the way it used to be. “Who desired who?”", “The night Ms. Peggy got hit by a brick”, “ When my mama met my daddy.” It was an ounce of happiness mixed with uncertain times but the music, the environment, the connection kept Joy wrapped within the community. Summoning sacred secrets stitched throughout our quilted history kept my Air Pods booming The Neville Brothers, The Meters, and Irma Thomas. I danced myself into a daydream. I saw a stage . This body dancing, alone. He had a story to tell, but who was he? 

I knew he would be dipped in blackness through a queer prism, born and raised in Shrewsberry, a black middle class subdivision of New Orleans. An artist who chased capitalist beliefs. Being in my thirties, this character would share the conflict between a dream deferred vs. wishful thinking. Love wouldn’t be foreign, just distant. He lived in the margins of society but yearned for the whole page. This dancing body I saw on stage, my new character, would be labeled difficult. Therefore, I gave him the most difficult name to pronounce in New Orleans, “ Tchopitulas “ . 

For the next few weeks I returned to Tchopitulas and the music. I had a character but not a story. What would he go after? Once again, I thought about how music can hold history. What environment would this music be played in? Who would be listening? Eventually, Legacy popped into my spirit. It’s the reason a dreamer dreams, the fuel to stay driven. Through Tchopitulas, I could examine how we attempt to create our legacies. Can you define your legacy? Sure. Your name savor on others taste buds after GOD has called you home. But with this play, a bigger question lingered: can you control it?