Most Refined (2009). Model: Samantha Caster
Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It’s about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.—Wynton Marsalis
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Everybody has the Blues. I have the Blues right now because the kids are already awake and making way too much noise, and because this is the end of Blues week. I like next week’s theme of classic nudes, but this week has been rather special and I’m sorry to see it come to an end. My friends have the Blues, one from not sleeping well for several nights, another remembering, and feeling, the passing of a friend on this date some years ago. Blues happens to everyone, everywhere, all the time. There is not a day, nor even a moment that passes but what someone has the Blues.
I don’t think the Blues are something to be avoided, though. If anything, I think the Blues should be embraced, welcomed, and given the time and emotion to be felt deeply. The only way one gets over the Blues is to feel them and then to let that feeling come out in some form. Creative people have an advantage there; they can write or sing or paint or draw their way through the Blues and end up with something beautiful. Some of the most wonderful works of art have come from letting the Blues take over the creative process. When we allow the Blues to be a natural part of our experience, they participate as the balance against which we measure our level of joy. Without the Blues, how would we know how happy we are?[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The music this week has been some of the best. One of the  reasons Blues music is so popular is that the emotions from which it springs are universal; one can identify with the music because one has felt the emotion for themselves. Blues music brings us together in our pain, or at the very least the remembrance of it. For example, as I get older I think of people who were part of my childhood, people whose names I can’t even remember now, and the song, “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” plays on cue in my head. Or something happens that reminds me how much things have changed in my lifetime and the B.B. King/Bobby “Blue” Bland duet, “Funny How Time Slips Away” comes to mind.
“Everybody Has The Blues” seems like a fitting way to end the week. It doesn’t matter who we are, rich, poor, married, single, young, old, we all get the blues. The song, like today’s picture, is a little more refined than what we normally see from the Blues, with Ray’s orchestra and the smooth voice of Tony Bennet joining him. Â Yet, there’s still that tone of melancholy in the bridge. There’s no escaping the Blues. They’re going to get you. Might as well accept them and go on. Enjoy the song.[/one_half_last]