I'm listening to From the Cradle, by Eric Clapton. I'm done with what I wanted to do today, which is to play golf. Had some good shots, lots of bad shots, and made a 35-foot par putt. I hope to do it again, Friday morning, and have an 8:48 am Tee time with Mr. Bill on Saturday. Now that I've had my back "stabbed," I'm in pretty good shape, back-wise. It's ESI Therapy, a steroid injection, near my disks at L5/S1 to shrink the disks, and take pressure off the sciatic. My doctor, Captain David Gover, RD, USAF, is a real nice person, and fun to joke with. After my first ESI Therapy, he looked at me and said, "I didn't realize you were that tall." I've been doing this long enough to know everybody in the Interventional Radiology (Angio) Clinic, nurses, techs, they take great care of me, and I appreciate them more than they'll ever know.
Anyway, the Blues...
I don't remember, exactly, when I first started listening to the Blues, probably in junior high, maybe high school. I was pretty young, though, enough so that I couldn't identify with some of the themes. I mean, c'mon, white kid, living at home, life being somewhat handed to him. I just liked the sound. I know I became a real fan in high school, getting dumped by a girl, or some of the love-themed Blues seemed to "speak" to me. I started to relate to the lyrics, and I was hooked. I realized that it's not a black/white thing; it's a living life thing. A shared common experience. Listening to BB King sing about how "[n]o body loves me but my momma, and she could be jiving, too" always seemed to make me feel that things weren't all that bad.
A few decades have passed since then, and the Blues genre is pretty popular. For me, personally, the songs have become the littany of my own experience. I've had the blues many times, but I guess that goes with depression. The music still helps me to think that things could be worse, and I move on. Now that we've officially reached Spring, we're on DST, and things are starting to warm up, I'm ready to get outside. I tell everyone that I am "solar powered," as my down-cycles mostly come in late-Fall and Winter. I've never been diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder, but I know what goes on in here, and it ain't very pretty. Between you and me, one of us is insane.
My African-American friends have all gotten a kick out of the "white boy" who digs the Blues. 'Course, I'm not much of a "boy" anymore, but I still dig the Blues. They'd bring out some obscure Blues albumn, old recordings, stuff like that, and I dug it very much.
I guess I can relate to Eric Clapton a great deal. Both of us have survived substance abuse, and we've both had to bury a child. Tears in Heaven tore me up the first time I heard it. Even my African-American friends recognize Clapton as a "Bluesman," for some it was a difficult admission, too. Eric has such a gift. Few of his songs are his "own" anymore, but he can take an old blues standard, and give it new life. The rawness of the emotions reflected in his music testify to his authenticity as a Bluesman. His story is my story, so to speak, he just had a lot more money and fame.
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