Throw Out All Other Shades of Blue

Editorial, 4/98 by Dylan Kinnett
It’s amazing what can happen when you’re lookin’ The Blues right in the face. I saw it, The Blues I mean. Sure, I’ve heard it a thousand times. I’ve even seen it performed: B.B. King live. But, Until recently, I had never seen The Blues. I guess that means I can’t say I’d know it when I see it. But I can say what I saw. I know what I saw. I saw The Blues: live.
That’s no way to begin a story, I know. Try again.
The thing in question happened at an open mike show. A guitarist friend was playing his own material. He never does that. I had waited a year and a half to hear his own music and it was worth the wait. There he was gyrating behind a Skinny Puppy T-shirt, singing the damnedest happy song of the evening, an enjoyable experience for all. Gone were the weak, disrhythmic interpretations I had come to expect from his public performances. Even though when just with friends, he could keep his tempo together they were still borrowed songs. They weren’t HIS rhythms. And now that I heard them, I loved his rhythms. He played four of them. He saved the best for last.
So there I was enjoying that when I heard a voice from the back. A deep, slow voice. It picked up during the instrumental part with another song, with alternate lyrics about the same subject: love. But this voice was sadder. It faded from time in order to make way for my friend to continue his joyful take on the matter. His voice was young. The one in the back was much older.
I read a poem that night. It was entitled “Angry Love Poem 76″. This title is a joke really. My hoe is that you will never find seventy six angry love poems in my notebooks. Either I never wrote them or I won’t let you find them.
I came to the conclusion that night that one can hold any feeling, any opinion toward any other feeling or opinion. That is obvious, but that the sediments in question can be proven valid under almost any circumstances is the realization that startled me most. The contrasting voices strengthened each other, as much as they detracted from each other, as much as they distracted the audience. My mind ran in all directions. Thought, emotion, love are all so universal that even to say so seems pointless and naive. That is the basis of the problems I have with most poetry. It never tends to go beyond the universal for me. It seems that, rather than truth, we poets spend a lot of time communicating generalities.
That guy in the back was loving it. With every lull in the lyrics, held bust out with his own take on things. Whatever invented chorus he kept repeating is lost on me now. I would suspect that, by now, it is lost on it’s maker as well. He was drunk and he kept singing even though it wasn’t his turn at the mike. Jokingly, someone sitting next to him turned and said “You’re up next buddy.”
The man from the back went up next.
He poured The Blues out of every pore in his body. As I’m sure he poured alcohol into every pore a few hours previous. And he swayed.
When I took Driver’s Education Class they taught us about what alcohol does, why it makes people unable to operate machines. It starts slow, gradually subtracting the number of higher functions in the brain until, like an animal, it grabs hold of The Soul and reduces it to the level of beast. Now, animals don’t drive cars, and neither should drunks. And animals don’t play guitar. Or do they? Not that they do, but this man’s song was certainly a primal scream. (if ever primal I’ve heard) Like the lonely mongrel dog on the backside of a foothill, he howled. The rest of the mountain was the ear that heard, the audience. And I sat like a rock, enthralled.
His howl was universal. We all understood. Even though we couldn’t understand his words which were slurred we could hear his pain and watch him take out his frustration six helpless strings. I chose to listen to the noise that seemed to come from the very core of the man, the animal core which was all he had left. His howl was universal because he’d drunk off everything that stood between the rest of us and the core of him, which is similar the core of us all.
The drunk man then proceeded to invent a strange brew of poetry. I remember that:
“Who am I?
I am not life itself
because I am not death either
Who am I?
not alive
but not death
Who am I?
I am what I experience
I am who I know
and I know you
but,
Who am I?”
This is no way to tell a story, I know. I do not mean to extol the virtues of public drunkenness because there aren’t any. Suffice it to say that I left that show scared to death. My mind started racing.
The Mind reminds me of a kitchen, of an infinite kitchen
capable of baking up infinite banquets.
“I am what I experience,” what did that mean? Did it mean that I am a bad musician? does that make me a babbling fool? After all , I did just experience both. No, I am both. MY babbling is bad music. (and here I am babbling about bad music.)
I take all the words and all the music and throw them all into my mental kitchen drawer. Use them like tools, like forks, or spoons in the hope that the utensils might hope me say something about what it means to be the human breed of beast. About what is at the core of me. And, if I’m lucky, I can say something about all of us, something universal. In the meantime, I guess I’ll be just like at dog on the hillside.
That’s no way to end a story, I know.