and it seems like it came out of some other age and time.
That's why my first strange memories are very small
I remembered this teenager, blind.
Denim armed, on a goat cart. Playin' a guitar and singin'
The feeling of that moment I think is very important to me because that's my, image of my first performance i ever saw.
We think we can get to the truth by the total erasure of mystery
and consequently we erase the deep question. I've been writing poems for a long time
and I refuse to have a straightforward narrative. Because I have to surprise myself.
otherwise I don't think I could write, and that's the same thing about the blues singer. I don't
think the blues singer would be singin' if he or she is really overly controlled.
*singing*
Often the blues singer was a storyteller as well. For the storyteller, the individual comes with the words,
possibly with the refrain. But the feeling is discovered. And that is what propels the individual.
The blues is a feeling.
We talk about the sacred and the profane within the context of the blues as well.
Cause often, on the weekday, and Sunday, some of these blues singers were very connected to the church.
Saturday night was a different thing. It was a place of revision.
But also it was a place of confrontation. Think about the refrain, that repetition, is necessary to discover,
to discover something more. To extend the narrative.
I think there's a very flexible narrative for the simple reason: because of the refrain.
The refrain is the form of conceit. But there is a freedom in the blues.
We have to think about signifying
how saying one thing means another.
And I think it has something to do with
we can say, survival.
When you can talk to elements of authority without being so direct, and yet,
you're talking to everyone around that symbol as well, it has something to do with surviving.
Language is political.
Language is music.
And the body is an amplifier, so we feel the sound.
The blues is a poetry of the soul.