A history of the blues

Once upon a time...chained in the bowels of a floating nightmare...an African woman fought through flashbacks of infanticide while trying to ignore the first mate's jism as it dried between her thighs...Having no words to express her despair...she moaned..

One moan becoming one with a million moans...coalescing into a cosmic moan...And becoming a force that no chains could bind...no torture could intimidate...that no alien culture could eradicate...

And for the lack of a better term...We called it the blues-

Once upon a time a black man knew the love of his sun kissed woman...Jealously cherished their intimate moments and swelled with a warrior's pride whenever she looked his way...Only to be beaten and removed in chains. Never to hold her again...Never to hear the music of her laughter...Or to feel the earth in the magic of her touch...And he cried-

Oh Lord...Oh Lord where can you be?
I'm lost...alone...and weary...Have mercy...Mercy on me...

Once upon a time black hands, gnarled, scarred and broken from centuries of holding on, wrapped themselves around catgut and a fretboard...teasing...squeezing...and pounding out a testimony of harmonic misery which brought tears to the eyes...a quickening to the heart and a fire to the loins..

Straddling the worlds of saint and sinner...speaking the truth of disappoinment and of dreams that died with the dawn...

Resisting the betrayal of reconstruction and the murder of Jim Crow...Filled with images of gleaming Caddillacs...two-faced women...rivers of whiskey and steamy dim-lit rooms where proud race horse asses maintained a steady grind against rock hard manhood...

Well worn soles coated with saw dust to soak up the blood of misplaced rage...catfish fryin...skirt tails rising...voices laughin loud to drown out the pain of insults and arbitrary lay offs...

You can't buy the blues...You can't sell the blues...You can't fake the blues...You can't own the blues...You can't teach the blues...You can't steal the blues...All you can do is love the blues and if you're blessed or very, very lucky, the blues will love you back!