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I did grow up in New Orleans. I grew up right on the lake, right across the levee.

For a while I was living in New Orleans for like 4, 5 years. I had just come back to town.

I needed New Orleans so badly back in 2006, just somebody to believe in me, somebody to care about me.

I spent so many summers and New Years and fun times in New Orleans. It was always a place where I felt I could go and actually let go and enjoy the spirit of something.

If you're open to it, New Orleans will teach you about yourself, but if you want to hide from who you really are, the city will help you do that, too.

I took several trips to New Orleans and met with people who had intimate knowledge of the underbelly of the city in the 1950s. The meetings were both fascinating and terrifying.

New Orleans. Born and raised. I lived there until I was 19.

The reality of Katrina didn't really strike me until the first time I flew up in a helicopter and saw areas of the city that I had ridden my bicycle as a youth being fully flooded.

I was blessed to grow up in really interesting times and to go back to a home where I was very safe.

I took many trips down to New Orleans trying to experience the city as deeply as possible. I'm from Detroit so New Orleans seemed very exotic to me.