Saturday, April 14, 2007
Just a little blues
I don’t think white people get ‘soul’, but if we did, I think I’d be experiencing it right now. I’m listening to Albert King hit his blues licks and I feel like most of my skeletal structure just melted and I want to play handsies and stare deeply into the eyes of a woman who is also feeling the music. Occasionally, I hear the lament of his harmonica and an off-chord fret on his guitar, and I wonder if it’s intentional. Somehow, blues shouldn’t be perfect; it should be like us… flawed and hungry, depraved and searching for understanding, with a thread of divinity not quite lost amid a discordant melody. It’s like being high without the drugs, it’s your head bobbing with closed eyes, hoping your partner is feeling it, too, and can respond with a squeeze. It’s a taxi hauling you around the city with the meter off and an unlimited supply of gas and leather upholstery that makes you sweat in rhythm to the chords, and it blends you until you no longer care if you laugh or cry or just sit and stare, your smile trying to dance out. It’s careless anarchy… it’s disorganized chaos without the urgency, and it's just too good and you hope it never stops.
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4 comments:
What a great write! I've never heard good music described this well.
Thank ya, thank ya... Yea, blues does very weird and wonderful things to me. I respect the skills involved in playing it so much and I'm so jealous of their ability that I feel every note... I honestly think I can tell when a blues performer is living the music rather than just playing it, the experience is almost religious.
I feel that way about classical...no joking, I really do. To say it uplifts me is putting it mildly. But I don't think I could write about it as well as you have here.
I think I can partially explain that (possibly). At least from my vantage point, the structure of classical music, with its insistence on precision sets a different mood than blues does, even if the passion for classical is just as strong. Blues requires the listener to 'feel' and identify, normally invoking the 'negative' emotions (jealousy, depression, even rage) whereas classical music tends to elevate and calm the spirit. While these emotions are just as strong, I think they're harder to write about. I think it has far less to do with your ability as a writer than it has to do with the music itself.
Then again, I could be full of crap... it's been known to happen. :)
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