I cannot explain my first impression of New Orleans to you, I can only show you what I saw and try to describe my feelings about the city. It is not like any other city I have visited previously, and it felt sad, like I had entered a world read about in the past. A city I thought no longer existed today in our modern world of mental health care and intellectual superiority.

Arriving was easy—Google maps guided us along highways, bridges over vast rivers, lanes of traffic swooshing past the clogged streets of the city until finally, just before our hotel we were taken onto smaller roads, a brief moment of stress and traffic lights before arriving at the hotel. We’re staying at a Courtyard by Marriott—a nice reliable chain of hotels—you know what you’re going to get. We checked in, dumped our bags, went for a walk.

The pathways were busy, lots of colour, lots of noise. Mardi Gras finished this week, so we thought it would be quieter. Not sure there was anything quiet. There was music. Bands and piano music drifting from bars, trumpets played on the street, children using upturned plastic cartons as drums beating out a rhythm. It made you want to dance.

The creativity of the city is undeniable. There were poets,  offering to write for any price. Artists with paintings hung on walls. The buildings were pretty with lattice work on balconies, strung with beads and draped with bright fabric. Even the people wore bright clothing, hair dyed pink and purple and blue.

But the sad side of the city is unescapable. People in drug stupors lying on the kerbs, on benches, huddled in corners. Homeless people carrying all their belongings.

There were the businesses I wanted to avoid: the photos of naked girls outside, the ‘first church of witchcraft’ the stalls offering tarot readings. We had only walked a few minutes when we encountered a naked man, and a shouting policeman, watched by a grinning crowd filming the spectacle on their phones. I didn’t see the crime—the drug sellers, the pick-pockets, the people traffickers—but I felt they were there.

The authorities were easy to spot, but I’m not sure what they were doing. We saw a few groups of National Guard—young men struggling in layers of uniform in the humid air, looking uncomfortable, as if they didn’t know what they were doing either. Mostly they seemed to be standing in a group, looking aimless. Some were walking, but they still looked a little aimless, maybe they had finished for the day, were on their way home.

I don’t know how to explain the city. It is somehow creative without being beautiful, as if all the creativity is too much for itself, and it doesn’t know where to go. Maybe for creativity to be beautiful it also needs boundaries, or it spins out of control into drugs and aimlessness. It all felt a bit pointless, as if the people there—the musicians and artists and entertainers—had forgotten what they were trying to achieve. As if they were searching for freedom but had become trapped not having any goals; trying to escape but unsure what they were escaping from or where they wanted to go. Overall, it just felt sad. I wanted to wrap it up and take it home, show it some security, the beauty of the countryside, the peace of routine. It felt like a city that has lost its mother, and it needs some care. But first impressions can be misleading. I will look further tomorrow.