Gravitating Towards ANTIGRAVITY
Forty years ago, I came to New Orleans as an exchange student from Argentina. My memories of that first visit to the city where I now write these lines are clear, but intermittent: riding on Claiborne with Chris in his car listening to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” a song that had just come out—though my American host and I also listened to softer music such as the also new song “Dancing in Berlin.” Chris’ father picking us and his sister up from the house and taking us all to a small burger place that had this one arcade game we were addicted to: Karate Champ. If you are old enough you might remember it. Lamb, Chris’ mom and my exchange mother, sometimes taking us to the Audubon Zoo…
Forty years down the road I am still in touch with that dear family. Oak Street was not on my radar in 1985—I wonder how it looked back then, what it was. I know how it looks and what it is now, because that is where I hang out most of the time when I’m not teaching.
Let me tell you how, after 20 years of absence from Louisiana, I gravitated back to this precious part of the world. For it was then, in an Oak Street café, that I picked up my first copy of ANTIGRAVITY.
In 2003 LSU hired me to teach a short course on comparativism. I was thrilled, not least because this meant an opportunity to reconnect with my beloved exchange family and with my New Orleans roots. By then, partly because of no email or such in 1985, I had lost touch with the family. Finding them was easier said than done. But find them I did. The wonderful reunion with my hosts, in the same house I had inhabited so many years ago, has resulted in numerous future trips from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, during my several visiting-teaching missions to LSU. Until one day… I landed on Oak Street.
During one of those excursions to the Crescent City, my student and friend Casey (“El Abogado”—yes, the one on the billboards) invited me for coffee at Rue de la Course. As I waited for him to come, I picked up a copy of this magazine you are now reading. It was the beginning of a love affair with a touch of obsession.
Later on, Loyola invited me to teach a mini-course similar to my LSU one. I always start those courses with a long philosophical introduction. When discussing “natural laws” in Loyola, I offered the students some examples of natural laws, including the law of gravity. As I did so, I showed them a copy of the magazine I had fallen in love with and jokingly said: “There seems to be a crowd that questions gravity.” Most of them laughed, but David and Lucien exclaimed: “We know some of the guys who do ANTIGRAVITY!”
So here I am, courtesy of my students, writing this short column to celebrate the existence of the best magazine I have read in years. Well done, my friends. You have a fan in Argentina, the true deep South! —Santiago Legarre
illustration by Laura Frizzell
March 2025 cover by Anneliese DePano
