vonnegut on the blues

 . . . Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today - jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop and on and on - is derived from the blues. 

A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.

The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country - an atrocity from which we can never fully recover - the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves. 

Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can't drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it's being played. So please remember that.

- Kurt Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country

things I like this week, vol. 34

The solitude of this quaint neighborhood
is so pleasant and yet so sad,
with its little houses
and the trees that paint shadows.

One of my favorite tangos, for the lyrics as much as for the music (both here).

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India.

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I love that the wrinkles in the fabric look like waves.

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Taken in Chile.

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The shortest short story, written in Spanish by Augusto Monterroso:

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.

(When [s]he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.)

. . .

So wonderful and chilling.

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I saw this on Bookshelf Porn and two days later saw one in person in Minneapolis. Apparently they sell kits for them.

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Oh, art jokes, how I love thee.

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So much more than a map.

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"After a really awful, no-good day, didn't your momma ever make you milk and cookies?"

They make everything better.

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An abandoned subway station in New York. Apparently now you can ride through it . . .

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A scientifically-based analysis of how much power Yoda can output.

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Number seven from Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules of writing:

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.