Fuck Those Fucking Fucks – Treme

I get sucked into lots of TV. It is the balm on the curse of a small life. Some of it is really terrible, like Smallville, yet I watch rabidly. Some of it is damned sublime, like the Shakespearean Deadwood. Some shows cut me to the bone: The claustrophobic dread of the Shield, the political knots in Rome. Yes, it’s “just tv”, not a real art form to be commented on like painting or literature. Though, if you step back from snobdom, tv is sort of like literature and painting combined.

I’ve been watching this show called Treme. I never checked it out, due to it’s unfortunate title that looks like a slang for extreme. I thought it was a cross between Fear factor and Jackass(and if you don't know what they are, then good on you for not being a slave to the boob tube). Turns out it is “Treah-May”, a neighbourhood in New Orleans steeped in history, energy and mystique.

At first, I thought of it as an ensemble drama, it does after all have a sprawling cast. I realised soon in that it only has two cast members, and they do such an intricate dance, it’s hard to tell who the lead is. One character is music, and the other is community. I suppose their union creates New Orleans. A ripe and debauched and crippled city of tight communities tied to the music that drives their identity.

Now, I am an obsessive jazz fan—needs to be said at the outset as it biases my view. So, let it be known, that if in between the musical segments all they had were sock puppets telling fart jokes, I would probably love this show. At least half of the show is musical segments, and they are glorious and diverse. Creole, oldie time jazz, bebop, zydeco, honkey-tonk, classical violin, bluegrass, hip-hop, tribal traditional. This show is like moving into the Smithsonian with a live band.

Some of the character seem chosen to remind you of real players. One character, a trombone player, is the absolute spitting image down to the haircut, of Cannonball Adderly(who played sax). Another character, a son who has abandoned new Orleans for greater heights and is torn about capitalizing on his roots, looks a lot like Wynton Marsalis. He has a bandmate on sax who needs to be chosen for the Coltrane biopic(please make one, he was a god and lead a cinematic life). Treme is also rife with real musicians, some of them famous, and some local celebrities, who simply play themselves. One really nice touch is Kermit Ruffins, a trumpeter, who sings with a voice like Miles Davis (and bears a passing resemblance).

While watching this show, I constantly have to pause and look up references to Creole language, bands and musicians as well as locales. learning what "second-line" means was fascinating. No, this not a distraction, but a joyous exploration and it lets me know that the writers did their work and the producers went whole hog with it. you can watch it without the research, but even if you are steeped in lore, you still benefit from research, that is how richly textured this show is.

Now, if all they did was present visually stimulating music, that would be awesome. If all they did was add to that some vignette/slice of life images of the people of New Orleans, that would make it that much richer. But no, they had to set the bar really really fucking high, and do the music so thick you can smell it, and characters so real, you might know them, and then on top of that all, they did in fact include a season reaching plot arc that draws everything together. It is, in fact very intense, if you are willing to watch through it all. It has to be viewed as a ten hour movie, rather than an episodic show. As a guy who cut his teeth on Russian literature, I can totally get down with a ten hour plot arc driven by a huge cast of deeply nuanced characters.

We all laugh at tv whether we watch it or not. We deride it, we complain that we are being spoken down to, we lament the end of culture. And then something like Treme comes along and sets us on our heads.

As I watched, enchanted, I kept thinking: I know this city, I know these people. It was absurd, I’ve never been deeper into the US than the “Canadian” states of Maine and New Hampshire.

There was something about the mood, the tone, the hijinx, the exuberance. Finally it came to me, it was something about the Joie De Vivre.

Of course I knew this city! Deep in culture and music, drowning in poverty and political corruption. It was Montreal during the deep depression that has spanned most of my life.

I was conceived in Montreal, family driven out by politics and circumstance, and I returned as an adult and lived through some of the greatest times anyone could know. Sometimes fate or economics drives a city under its heel, and cities die. Cities like New Orleans or Montreal throw a party, flip you the bird and keep right on thriving.

I feel tempted to bring out my most beautiful ghosts of a Montreal passed, but will save that for another post. This post was for television. Treme is cinema verite, I know this. Even if it wasn’t, it would still be theatre at its best. You smell the mould, and taste the rich cuisine. You can’t sit still, you have to dance, then you have to go out and find some smokey place to dance. You have to dig out your old albums. You have to dig up your old friends. You have to remember what is best about living.

I saw a trailer for what will most likely be a profitable bad movie based on a profitable bad book. It details a character who “used to have a hunger for life, and I want it back”. I understood the trailer, it twanged my rusty heart strings, but it was cheap pablum. Treme is the real thing. It reminds you about important things, passionate things, delightful things. And it doesn’t cheat you while doing it. It doesn’t take advantage of you or make fun of you, or make you a demographic.

It’s just raw fucking power of voice and song and narrative.

I don’t sling tv very often, despite being a junkie, but I will sling this one. I write this sitting under one of my very favourite possessions: a photo of Thelonious Monk sitting on a curb in an alley eating a plate of beans—part of his payment for playing some club somewhere, back in the day. I love Monk more than most anything and that one unassuming picture somehow seems to sum up my love. When I watch Treme, I get the same feeling I get when I look up at that picture.