Dr. Ding Sings The Blues
Picture it: Paris, 1961.
A solitary, sparrow-like figure, clad in trenchcoat and beret, clutching several thin notebooks and sheafs of paper with grim certainty; her countenance is pale and wan yet somehow she is as luminous as a thousand Jardin des Luxembourg Café candles. Listlessly smoking a Gauloise, she sags against a doorframe as the rain beats down a solemn grey tattoo. “Mon Dieu!” she whispers, her eyes feverish with longing, thinking of her now-faraway lover, of warm, soft sheets, of harsh words that pierce her heart as carelessly as a knife would an apple, if the apple happened to get in the way of the knife, as apples often do. Foolish apples! For what do they know of life?
And now this. She is alone and freshly grieving, cold and soaked-through by the very tears of Montmarte herself, the snooty French bitch. She realizes only now that he would never love her, not as she loved him. Never! The rain would beat on, relentless, her own tears unnoticed, unmourned. Her writings would so too pass on, unread. All in vain. All for nothing. “Alors!” she cries, and throws herself bodily in front of the next passing streetcar, her fragile soul a mere hiccup after a particularly rich meal of foie gras.
“Alors!” indeed mon ami; alors forever.
Bet you thought Dr. Ding Sings The Blues was going to incoporate some Edith Piafian/late-stage French poet tropes, eh? Yeah, well, Dr. Ding ain’t no angsty, beanie-sporting Beatnik writerchick. Screw all that unrequited gloomy existential shit with a self-consciously seriocomic ending. Life is for the living. Get to it.
In the meantime, however, it’s highly recommended that you sing the blues every once in awhile. Blows the dust out of the asscracks of whatever personal demons are troubling you. Here are some of my favorites.
At Last — Etta James
Shotgun — Jr. Walker and the All-Stars
Hellhound On My Trail — Robert Johnson
They’re Red Hot — Robert Johnson
Pride and Joy — Stevie Ray Vaughan
Dearest Darling — Bo Diddley
Who Do You Love — Bo Diddley
Going Down Slow — Little Walter
I’m Tore Down — Eric Clapton
It Hurts Me Too — Junior Wells
The Same Thing — KoKo Taylor
Voodoo Woman — KoKo Taylor
Wang Dang Doodle — KoKo Taylor
Killing Floor — Howlin’ Wolf
Built For Comfort — Howlin’ Wolf
BOOM BOOM — John Lee Hooker
Sugar Mama — The Bel Airs
Going to the River — The Bel Airs
That oughta get your mojo workin’.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
Yes, we sing the blues at our house. Well, anyway, my husband *plays* the blues and Dodger only howls for one specific song played on a blues harp in a certain key so we think there is something to it all.
If the only and only Trainer tells us it’s so, then it’s so. The blues * WILL* blow a gale storm right through whatever ails ya, be it supernatural or no.