| A FORCE OF NATURE With each steel string vibration, a shiver sprints up my back to the base of my skull like a blast of A/C on a sweat-soaked summer day. Running up and down scales of notes like a marathon through a field of hills. Every high-pitched summit: mind-numbing ecstasy; every bottomed-out valley: streaming tears and clenching grimaces. The blues reach into my soul and tear it apart like a branch in a wood chipper, but then reform it like so many drops of water flowing together to form a pool: completely whole as if never broken before. Just closing my eyes and letting the rhythms envelop me, swallowing it with every gasp for air. Unable to escape, it surrounds me on all sides drowning in it, I am immersed in pure emotion: Highs higher than 10 Everests Lows more dark and painful than any Job-ian torment. The blues are 20 octaves of emotion An insane symphony of apathy and ecstasy A manic depressive seizure Falling off a cliff into an abyss of desertion, only to be catapulted up into a crisp, clean lungful of untainted, tear-streaming joy. A triathalon of experience pouring out from a lover's union of vocal chords and steel string. Like that monument to physical fortitude, this race will leave you exhausted and spent and yearning to do it 7 days a week and twice on Sunday. Because once you've Biblically known the blues, the only thing that can send you on that roller-coaster ride is true love. |