Down Home Dirty Blues

While Brahms and Mozart are the missionary position, all candle-lit, flower petal strewn tender sex, the blues bring floggers and handcuffs, analingus and head-down-in-a-pillow-to-keep-from-screaming sex. It’s sweaty and dirty and knocks you on your ass.
It’s the secret grope under the table, the husky and thick-with-promise words that are whispered in your ear while lost in a crowd.  It’s the grunt of ever-hunger, even the most acrobatic and sizzling session always leaves you wanting more.

Classical music, while gorgeous and stunning, begins in the head and, if lucky, ends in the heart. The blues, on the other hand, hits deep in the gut and slowly creeps, in tingle and snaps, throughout every single inch, every single cell. It is the powerhouse that shames the mitochondria.   It binds and frees,  transforming every cell and, in a most drunken Rumi manner, lifts one up in submission.  This deep down, dirty, sexy blues gets the feet popping and the kundalini rocking.

There should be an O note because blues, more than any other genre of music, just hits it.

And this is Mississippi’s contribution. If nothing else, we are the birthplace of that down and dirty blues.

I had the opportunity to see Buddy Guy play this weekend at The Shed’s 6th Ever ShedHed Blues Festival. There were other musicians, most notably Zora Young, Hubert Sumlin,  and Mudphonic, but make no mistake, Buddy Guy was the headliner.

I don’t know much about blues other than Koko Taylor and its intellectual history. In fact, I had never heard of Buddy Guy until a year or two ago when I heard him sing “Born Under a Bad Sign” with the late great Koko Taylor.

My ignorance at times astounds me.

He was electric; at 73, his fingers were faster than my brain could ever be.  He was dirty, he was funny, and he was a consummate showman.  He involved the audience in his songs; his connection with them was almost palpable.  When he left the stage and was six inches in front of me, he was illuminating. He was hyperilluminating: he was a fire unto himself.

Never before have I seen such a presence on stage, felt that energy that started with tapping feet and ended up square in my gut, undulating and throbbing as if I had caught his fire.

I wish my guitar guy could have been there, although, he probably would have had a heart attack.

After all, this is the guy that Eric Clapton called the greatest guitarist in the world.

In the quiet of the Harmony House, I can find myself with too much silence on my hands.   On one hand, it’s incredibly nice. It’s an easy silence, not the empty gulf between question and answer that I found myself in with my grandmother. It’s delicious and freeing: I can sit in silence if I want to, I can sing at the top of my lungs if  I want to with nothing but cats staring back at me.

On the other hand, the silence is a rather loud reminder of what’s missing from my life.

It’s been a while since the Guitar Guy fizzled out; before that, it was the Two Week Wonder. That particular relationship culminated with his puking in a parking lot and my realizing that I was so, so, so out of my element.  Before that, it was a really, really long time.

And I find that, looking back, I’ve made tons of excuses.  I was too caught up on impossibilities; I was too busy. I was too afraid of what I’d find.

As I’ve unpacked, I’ve come across things that I didn’t even remember still having, although I remember, once upon a time, having them.  Old pictures and dishes, memories of a life so far behind me that I struggle to recall it at all.

I’ve thrown all but the practical parts away, with a few exceptions.

I’m sitting on the back porch tonight, looking up at one clear, star. It’s to the south of me, and I wish I knew what it was called.

I won’t wish on it, no, but I will take it as a sign that it’s time to start moving.  I say I want this or that and then watch as days, weeks, or months pass by with no noticeable movement toward either this or that.

The manner in which we spend our time reflects our priorities, no more or less than the manner in which we spend our money, I think.

I think I have a bit of reprioritizing to do.

It’s past time that I’m more receptive to possibility. In the mean time, I’ll just keep moving.

Cause the blues are callin’.