I lived in the same neighborhood as Michael and his family from 2010-2018. His house was on the most inviting, tree-lined block in the neighborhood, and it stood out. During the holidays, their house would attract spectators walking and driving by to admire the over-the-top lights display. Other houses had big, bright displays as well, but those houses seemed to feed off the energy of the Homan’s. There was putting up Christmas lights and inflatable yard decorations, then there was doing it Michael’s way, with humor and irreverence, with little visual jokes and references built in. For instance his displays consistently referenced the old holiday TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the stop-action-animation one with Burl Ives narrating. I believe Cornelius the Dentist was represented, as was the Abominable Snowman character. This may not sound extra-ordinary, but a few things made it so. One was the vintage white four-door sedan in the driveway (forgive me for not recalling the make and model), not part of the display, you may be thinking, except that it was. Along the wide panel in those old sedans that ran behind the back seats , an Abominable Snowman scene complete with fake snow was visible through the large back windshield. Not the kind of detail that would stand out at night amidst flashing lights, but one that always made me smile when I walked by in the day. There was another Abominable Snowman as well, poised climbing up the balcony railing. That one tended to stay up if not year round then longer than the rest.
Michael didn’t just buy a bunch of stuff from Home Depot and throw it up. Instead he put his love for that show into it. Maybe he identified with that snowman character on some level, or at least loved that show. The point is, he put himself into it, completely unpretentious, humorous, winking, knowing. I never talked to him about the display or that TV show. One didn’t need to to see what was going on. He put it all out there in the yard. One only needed to give it the slightest moment of thought and attention to understand, and to be rewarded, enlightened for having done so.
That was Michael. He worked on that level, lived on it. If you were smart, had enough of an attention span, and took a little time to engage, then just knowing him, interacting with him, peeking into his world for a moment was rewarding and enlightening. And if you weren’t sharp, didn’t bother to take the time, couldn’t muster the requisite attention, then Michael probably wasn’t going to be your cup of tea. He was quick, but it came dry. You had to pay attention.
After I had kids of my own, I began to view Michael’s holiday display in a new light. Where the heck did he find the time to put all that stuff up? And how did he get on his roof? That was a tall house! Yet year in and year out he found the time within his teaching, scholarly work, family life, writing, playing, and recording music, not to mention Saints season, to take out all those lights and decorations, break out the ladder, do it all with care and heart. I would make plans to put up some decorations, then after the whirlwind of the holidays and finishing the semester and settling into the new year, I would make more plans to put up some decorations next year, while Michael had already taken his down and put them away.
All except for that Abominable Snowman on the balcony rail.
I understood then that the family piece for Michael was a big one. I learned more about Michael as a father when I visited his home for the first time. Many people will recall the parties the Homans threw in the springtime, around the time of the release of what the hurricane names would be for the season. Michael would probably object to this juvenile term being applied to those parties, but they were epic. (If the Epic of Gilgamesh was epic, he may have argued, how can a party also be epic?) What left the biggest impression on me wasn’t the beautiful home, the fine musical instruments, the army of handle-bottles of booze amassed like a battalion atop the bar, the top-notch spread, their large contingent of friends who partook in it all, or the graciousness of the hosts, as impressive as those were.
What struck me most was the rope swing on the big oak tree in the back, thick, ship-grade rope tied around the hefty part of a huge branch, with around eight feet of dangling swing, ending in a knotted seat/foothold, and a diagonal swing arc that went from a high corner out over the center of the yard and back. Now how did he get that up there, was my thought at the time. But it was more than the how of it. That swing told me all I needed to know about what kind of father he was, and later, when I had kids of my own, I thought about where I was going to try to put their rope swing, and how I was going to get it up there, all inspired by Michael.
Before I knew Michael as a neighbor and party host, I had already known and admired him as a colleague and a scholar. He was a natural as a scholar, born to read, write, and think. One of the first faculty colloquiums I attended at Xavier featured Michael lecturing on the ancient origins of social justice as a concept, which had stemmed from his recent travels and studies in the Middle East. The Q&As at those affairs could be quite intense, and Michael handled some probing questions with total ease. He had a real gift for extemporaneous efficiency. That was part of my introduction to Xavier culture, and he was an integral part.
We all enjoyed when he rose to speak at faculty meetings, knowing we’d be in for succinctness and wit. He got more laughs than anyone else in those meetings, who knows how, it was a tough room. Maybe Cliff Wright was in contention, but Cliff had had a big head start, and no one else even came close. One laugh in particular came at my expense, sort of. I was running for a seat on the College Coordinating Committee, unopposed, and Michael was charged with reading off the candidate names ahead of the upcoming elections.
He read the position, then my name, then a brief pause: “And let me be the first to congratulate you.”
That was it, one little line, and the pause, all that was needed to crack everyone up and let them enjoy a faculty meeting, if just for a moment.
My favorite Michael Homan moment in a faculty meeting is one that I’m sure others will recall. The committee was faculty salary, I believe, and the issue was that staff and administration pay had gone up and up, at least as a percentage of the budget, while faculty salaries had fallen behind national averages. The administration had grown exponentially, was the point, and the visual aid Michael used to make this point was a photo of the administration from 1980. Not of photo of a list of the administrators, not a bunch of small headshots. He put up a photo of the three individuals who comprised the entire administration, posed together, smiling and standing on the famous front steps. One of the people in the photo of course was Norman Francis, who now sat in the front row during the meeting, as he always did, grinning at the photo of his younger self, as the audience got a good laugh. Michael’s visual primer had nailed it, and no one appreciated it more than Norman Francis.
Later I got to know Michael as a musician and songwriter. With his partner, Editor B, he wrote, recorded, and released the debut CD of Half Pagan in a burst of creative energy. I marveled at how quickly they’d got it done. They had a theme song that told their origin story: they were two friends, one of them was Pagan, the other wasn’t. They were Half Pagan! They had a great live act. Editor B had a commanding presence as a frontman. Michael played plugged-in acoustic guitar run through heavy distortion. The bass player was from Egg Yolk Jubilee, a great local band that we both liked. If you know me, you know I like to bond with people over music. We watched Egg Yolk together at Banks Street Bar. He came to see my band play. I went to see his. He played in punk bands in Omaha. I did the same in Tuscaloosa. We talked about Husker Du, eighties punk rock that burst out of the Midwest and spread through a DIY network to small towns and impressionable young ears all over the country. Same way I’d heard it.
Michael was effortlessly cool, the cleverest chap in the school. A man of letters, as his Twitter bio said. He’d get traction on Twitter without even trying. It was around the time the Confederate statues were coming down, I believe, when he had a Tweet get retweeted like 250 times, which, for New Orleans Twitter, was bigger than Michael Tisserand gets on his best day. It was something along the lines of, I hope the people who say they aren’t going to visit New Orleans anymore don’t visit New Orleans anymore. That was it. The pith, the zeitgeist, the finger on it. Without even trying. Effortless cool. The person you look at and just marvel because you know he’s got it, the wit, the knowing, the inside edge. He was the one who could wear a Saints fleur-de-lis patch on his academic robe and pull it off. The vintage white sedan, the scooter, the sweater vests, the style. We looked up to him. He set the pace. We’re all much poorer for his being gone, the school, the neighborhood, the community. We’ll miss you. I’ll miss you. You were a cool dude. You left a big mark. You won’t be forgotten.
XulaDad 