Today’s Theme Music

I’m thinking about the blues today. One, I like the blues. Two, lotta people suffer the blues during the holidays.

I’m a mixed media presentation on the holidays and the blues. Adulthood and cynicism squeezed the holiday cheer right out of me despite some terrific childhood memories. I know many suffer depression or the blues during the holidays. I can’t speak directly to Kwanzaa, Solstice or Hanukkah. Nobody I know openly celebrates Kwanzaa. My Jewish friends celebrate Hanukkah without any expression of the blues. I celebrate Solstice, and it’s too joyful to feel blue.

But around Christmas Eve, the blues creep into my thoughts because I can’t go back to more wonderful times, to that time when I was an innocent and celebrated Christmas without addressing larger world issues. Memories of that time feed impressions that this era seems like a faux celebration. Along the way, I’ve learned, the blues never hibernate, and they sure as hell never die. All you can do is cope.

Here’s Otis Spann with ‘The Blues Never Die’, to remind us of that. Happy friggin’ holidays.