The Blues are pretty handy. 'One size fits all' sort of thing. I have been recording some music lately, and some of that music has been The Blues. Sometimes a blues song or melody gets into my head and I find myself singing it everywhere.
"Lord! I gots dem sittin' at the traffic light cornah o' Airport Road 'n Hana Highway waitin' on the green arrow blues"
"Have mercy! I reached in the coolah, looked dis way n' that, saw it was missin' ‘n moaned "Why I do dat?!" Lawdy! I got dem ol’ lef my peanut buttah cookie on da table at home blues"
You too can sing The Blues wherever you go. Just insert your words into the words of whatever blues song you're listening to. It's very cathartic.
The Blues can happen through soooo many situations, every day. The opportunity for them to occur is prodigious. Most of those situations aren't the rock bottom soul scrapin' kind but they're blue just the same. Which gets me to thinking that life itself is rather sad. So many things don't come to pass the way you'd want them to but we're taught to buck up, tough it out, and shrug it off. Well, you can only do that for so long. Better way of handling things, I think, might be to belt out some blues.
You can sing them in the shower. In the car. When nobody else is around. Why keep sadness in? That's stress! Just reading The News is cause for The Blues so why not lament and moan? It'll do you right.
Maybe it's a sign of the times that we don't grieve much anymore. Kids certainly do, at the drop of a hat, but adults, why, if you exhibit any sadness people run away if they can but that doesn’t change the fact that adults carry a lot of sadness inside. We've seen a lot of stuff that probably we shouldn't have and there's plenty that needs expressin', 'cept we don't.
Get this man a saxophone!
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We're expected to be happy all the time, up, positive, and no greater evidence of that is the preponderance of selfies plastered all over the internet where folks are super up and livin' bright but I know they're not always that way.
They're taking time out, some parts of their days, and thinkin' or singin' The Blues about somethin', just like me.
And there's nothing wrong with that, that's part of life. You need to experience shadow so that you can appreciate light.
(Just don't do any shadow experiencing in public!)
When I see those old bluesmen in music videos, the genuine ones (not the flashy over the top wannabe ones you see so much of today), those soulful, grizzled, hard life lived old guys playing the blues on some beat up old guitar, singing as if only to themselves, I can identify.
That's roots, man, that's soul. That's pain and suffering and it's authentic as hell. Right now I got the "I'm losin' my job and everybody's askin' me what I'm gonna do next" blues and if you haven't been there you don't know what I'm singing about but if you have, you know. 'Cuz you've had 'em too.
Maybe as a society we've gotten away from reality some, we don't want to hear about a lot of things, see them, or know that they're going on. We want high excitement almost exclusively or think that we do but while that tends to pull us together, at sports arenas, in concert settings, at street festivals and the like, we are also aware that that's temporary because when the show is over and the excitement dies down, the crowd drifts away and we're left with ourselves.
We're left with day to day life. Reality. All that stuff that occurs outside of the sight of others where we wrestle with subjects like our worth, impact, longevity, relationships, weight, work, prospects, chances, responsibilities, and obligations. The heavy things in life that weigh us down. Ain't no gettin' around those. You might feel better singin' some blues just then about what's troublin' you.
Personally, I can only sing maybe one or two blues songs and that's it. I'm done. All it takes for me. I don't linger in Bluesland, and found out long ago that I actually can't. Like most adults nowadays I have a short attention span, am insatiably curious, and am always ready for the next experience. Couldn't sing The Blues for long if I tried.
But I know that The Blues are always there for me if I need 'em, even if most times I only sing 'em light.