The Blues Notes
Dear Blues —
Welcome to the album release listening party of your bite-marked soul. Play deep cuts so I can dance to them before society’s indifference makes a ghost out of you. Nobody smiles anymore, so here’s my mouth, sketched as a straight line. A closed-lipped border between confession and confusion. Thumbing through your liner notes, I consider your themes. I understand your libretto like I do a river—wide and bottomless. It’s the falling season again. A familiar heartbreak in my head while I tumble downward with prayers for softer ground fresh on my lips. I wish your life upon no one, born out of that which will become your undoing. Imagine, instead, becoming an anthem to the evening, a soundtrack of soft-spoken desires, an echo of our joys as an open palm. But eventually, your fingers close, reality hits with bare-knuckled precision, and we learn to take punches and remain standing. That’s you being you. That is the blues.
***
Dear Blues —
When you were born, I became cerulean with light. My dreams seemed pristine and dazzling, with nary a cloud on the horizon. I kept you padlocked within the security box of my body, but you inevitably escaped. Translated temptation as if it were a second language and rolled dice in alleys, everything coming up snake eyes. You marveled at my sly tendency to pull feigned smiles from pockets like loose change. We made a confidence game of it, here then gone, then here again. Life felt heavier than it looked, like a rain-soaked blanket. On my knees in church, there were countless confessions. I filled infinity with them. As if infinity could evolve into a verb if we just infinitied it into existence. You crooned testimonials with careless lyrics as folks nodded on beat. I stayed behind to sort out the carnage. My integrity divided, again and again, splinters shot in all directions like fireworks.
***
Dear Blues —
Often you come from nowhere, clutching hope like a toddler does their favorite toy. Mumbling harebrained ideas, conceived and repeated until they sound convincing. You loiter in the hallways of my mind, glowing, slightly blue. Sometimes, you hold onto a pint glass, joint, or pocketknife while skulking in the shadows. No matter what, you stay uncontrollable and inconsolable. Polluted by the emotional byproduct of all the women I did dirty just to get over one from the past. How I occasionally played fast and loose with the whole honesty thing, circles of double talk sullying my reputation, siphoning away trust equity. The students I swindled over summer breaks for tuition money, our long rides south of nowhere in the dead of night. Call a hustle what it is. Slick talk or parlor tricks suspending common sense in purgatory. Self-fulfilling prophecies tethered to lyrics that sound authentic but aren’t. Yet I sing. Nonetheless.
***
Dear Blues—
Occasionally hints of a better life flicker at the edges like a dying campfire. A fresh start, a new home, a dream job. The perfect match with their obvious red flags. Sometimes hope aches like a phantom limb or a childhood injury that refused to mend right. You keep an assortment of unfulfilled promises on a bedside table, and after midnight, they buzz with fervor. The average person has four to six dreams nightly, so some are bound to be ludicrous. How do we know unless we’ve fact-checked them for feasibility? How to know with certainty their validity? It rains, it pours, and the best-laid plans get screwed. Things fall apart, schemes come together, and the sun rises and sets. And then there’s you, with half-healed wings spreading in the stratosphere, gliding recklessly, Icarus-high on desire. Slinging yourself into gravity’s untrustworthy grasp, singing life’s praises while sidestepping its scourges. Feigning invincibility while knowing everything crashes, eventually.
***
Dear Blues—
You erase me in increments. Edit portions of my identity like needless dialogue in a draft novel. Fingers first, then toes. After deleting my aching knees, you cross out my reckless mouth, and then my scattered mind. Next, thinning hair and missing teeth. Admittedly, I’ve always been a five-o-clock shadow in rooms filled with respectable, clean-shaven gentlemen. Trouble in taverns always spots me, sidles up sweetly on barstools to whisper motel room numbers in my ear. Nowadays, my eyes stay cloudy as rivers outside, muddied and polluted. Your eyes roll endlessly at my antics. Claim I mention music too often in my writing. But I savor the sound of your name spelled out - B-L-U-E-S - and how each letter slides out my lips. Falls from my mouth and floats away. You grow bored with my hesitancy, how low spirits meld with high hopes. I scribble down several pensive metaphors. They’re lovely but too convoluted. I learn to skip whatever semantics I use to pimp meaning out of nothing. No matter what song I dream of singing, you’re what I’m stuck with.
***
Dear Blues—
By the end of your set, you’ve told the crowd all the best stories. Like the one with the lady fed up with her spouse’s shenanigans, greeting him on the porch with sass and a shotgun. Or the one about a guy who falls so low that he does anything to get high. A running chronicle of dustups, screwups, and breakups. You seem downbeat and repetitive, but like a compelling narrator, you toss your entire soul into each tale, ducking loan sharks and sneaking out windows. Your charm gets drinks on the house and occasional for-a-good-time phone numbers. You’re particular about distinguishing between a hardscrabble existence, commonplace struggles, and your favorite - shit luck - which always leaves chaos in its wake. But worse, the vibe, which remains liable for your full heart and troubled spirit. For flat tires and absentee lovers. You’re being overdramatic again, but you know no other way. When you leave, you’re never really gone, just lingering in the background harvesting source material for the next album. The next encore. The next goodbye.
Adrian S. Potter
Adrian S. Potter, the winner of the 2022 Lumiere Review Prose Award, writes poetry and prose in Minnesota when he’s not busy silently judging your beer selection and record collection. He is the author of three books, including And the Monster Swallows You Whole (Stillhouse Books) and Field Guide to the Human Condition (CW Books). Adrian’s words have appeared in North American Review, Rigorous, The Comstock Review, and Obsidian.
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