Singing the (Lack of) Blues

I stare out the window, eyes bleary, waiting for the traffic light to change. Baton Rouge, I’ve discovered, is no place to have the blues. Almost every Saturday the streets flood with people armed to the teeth with purple, gold, beer, and so much Tiger spirit it’s a wonder they’re not constantly pissing themselves. There’s no subway system to ride and muse upon how your life got so damn bad. Buildings are too far apart to have appropriately atmospheric alleyways, but far enough apart to make contemplative strolls for another bottle of whiskey all but impossible. In short, it’s a place of frustration, not of the blues. But with a decidedly un-bluesy optimism, I keep looking for them.

There’s only one 24-hour diner in this city—excluding, of course, the IHOPs and Waffle Houses. I keep getting my hopes up for some kind of emotional epiphany in Louie’s, but they have yet to be fulfilled. Still, it’s just dingy enough to have a depressing sort of atmosphere—sickly lighting, the down-on-his-luck guy in the corner with some cold coffee, that kind of thing. Not to mention the ridiculously improbable mural which does kind of put you in a hopeless state if you look at it long enough. But unfortunately, as it is the only 24-hour diner, it is inevitably overrun by figures that don’t fit into my smoky, bluesy picture—college students. Frat boys loading up on omelettes after a night hitting the Tigerland bars, Sororitail with their way-too-short skirts and shrill shrieks. High school students, too, all horseplay and guffaws, up way past their bedtime. All of this may be a little condescending and more than a little hypocritical. After all, they have just as much right as I do to be in the diner, and I myself am a college student. Come down to it, I was one of those high schoolers, too, and not long ago at all. So I begrudge these people a place in my universe and accept Louie’s as a compromise between the diner it is and the birthplace of disconsolate artistry I want it to be.

To be honest, I myself am not the typical conduit of the blues. In fact, my demographic— white young woman from a fairly decent family—is usually barred from the genre. And really, my life is going rather well. Of course, there’s always the option of going on a drug-addled, roller-coaster-like bender for the next couple of decades. Then my claim to the blues wouldn’t really be in question. And if that happens, well…great. I guess? But it’s not exactly the route I plan on taking. So what then? Will I ever be able to know the blues?

Well, I could always move to New Orleans. Indeed, I plan on doing so. No one, really, can dispute the validity of the Big Easy as a “blues city”. Its florid, decaying elegance and history littered with… well, the litter of human experience gives it a sense of decadent hopelessness other cities seem to lack. What I wouldn’t give to have a room above the French Quarter, with a balcony on which I could languish and watch the world pass by… I’d have to evacuate during Mardi Gras, though. The influx of frat boys from all around the country would be a bit unbearable. But the rest of my year could consist of too much coffee and too many cigarettes, not enough sleep, and with any luck (or lack of it) pages upon pages of the best writing the world has yet to see. Maybe in that stifling moist air with the wail of a soprano sax carrying to me from the levee, my muse will finally wander in and decide to get down to work. But for now, the light turns green, and as yet another SUV cuts me off, I realize I have quite a ways to go before I can sing the blues.

But then, I've always been lacking in social niceties

Ladies and gents, I am not here to bring you the Truth. There’s trade in that for those who want it, but as for myself I find it alternately unbearably boring or repulsive. Sometimes a combination of both, I suppose. No, instead I bring you bemused musings of someone whose muse is perpetually on a coffee break. As for who I am… well, they say that only anonymity bears honesty. Not that, as a writer of fictions and exaggerated anecdotes, I have any obligation to honesty5. But regardless, I’ll forego painting a direct picture of my identity here, as it’s a pointless thing. Chances are, if you’re here you know who I am anyway. If you don’t, you’ll probably get the gist of me through my writings eventually.
So into the vast void of the Interweb I’ll spew my thoughts. Hopefully someone will be there to clean up after me.