Memphis Blues

They’ve got the blues in Memphis. Twelve bars and a blue note, that flattened seventh, a smooth stroll down a crowded mixolydian sidewalk. Block to block, door to door, you can feel it from Beale Street all the way over to Stax Records. You can feel it, the call and response, the driving backbeat, and the thick wail of a Gibson 335, but until your heart get shredded by someone who shouldn’t have, maybe even yourself, until you feel the loneliness of a world pushing down on you, a world bent on holding you under water, you probably don’t actually have the blues.

Even Thoreau, lonely in isolation, got the blues at serene, bucolic, Walden. He would have liked Memphis.

You know, you should walk down Beale with me sometime. I’m buying.

It just might cure your blues.