From my perch overlooking Frenchmen and Decatur Street, I see a lot of strange things: second-line parades, gutter punks, street people talking to themselves, drunks, dancers, partiers, music lovers. My view now includes a straight shot into the tattoo parlor across the street, and I can watch people getting tatted.

This morning, my corner view includes a literal flood from a violent thunderstorm; the metal city trash can is gone, floating down the street. If you’re reading this, it means the electricity stayed on and we managed to finish the magazine and ship it to our printer electronically.

Anyone who knows me understands that I’m a gadget geek; I love my iPhone and my iPad. I love the new tools that Google is providing for my use. I love the web. I love information, and I really like the fact that I can get information quickly (maybe not accurately in all cases) from my favorite websites.

So while I’m a creature of a pre-internet world, I have one foot planted firmly in the future. It’s exciting and exhilarating to think of how things are changing.

There’s a voice in the back of my mind, though, that keeps nagging me about what our investment in the internet is costing us as a culture. Emails have taken the place of one-on-one communication and phone calls. Overall, the world is now in thrall to electricity. How would we function without it? How would we do our banking? Would that mean we’d have to actually go to the bank instead of handling everything online?

It’s scary, actually, to think of what would happen without electricity. But in New Orleans we sort of know: think Katrina, and think what happened to our thin veneer of “civilization.”

This is why I like media that can preserve music, art, photographs and memories in ways that don’t require electricity. It’s also why I’ve been a proponent of a music museum in New Orleans for over 30 years. It’s shameful that this city, the cradle of jazz and the most musical city on the planet, doesn’t pay tribute to the musicians and music in a high-profile building that includes archives, photos, instruments, clothing,instruments, sheet music and more: a museum worthy of showcasing our musical heritage and future.

The closest thing we have to a museum at the moment is the planned music museum at the Old US Mint, which at the moment contains a superb exhibit about Preservation Hall. You should visit when you attend the upcoming Satchmo Summerfest (by the way, we’re very proud of this issue of OffBeat that pays tribute to Pops and his life and times). But we need more.

New Orleans wouldn’t be a “music city” without its traditions. Everything that happens now owes its existence to history. We need a showcase for our music that can preserve, promote and educate. It’s high time.