Listenin' to Blues.  Blues is like the soles of your feet; leathery but ticklish, durable, delicate and stable but able to move like the wings of an angel dancing.  Maybe we like Blues because it is a sure place to land when fantasies and hopes have taken us higher than it is safe to go; high, high up, and able to see in a single glance everything we have known from a million different moments, holding deep in our gut that perfect giddiness that, while we have it we know it is the pulse of life and when we lose it we claim it was nothing, just foolishness, and perhaps even a mere self-delusion. 

Listenin' to Blues allows us to remember how it felt to be so gloriously close to the top, and no matter what we say to diminish it, no matter how we may claim that the fall does not hurt, in the Blues all the stress is relieved, all the angst is soothed, and the agony of impacting the earth is acknowledged, and escorted out.  We can recall without judgement the precious place we did indeed fly to—listenin' to Blues, we keep that place. 

Blues tells us that life is good no matter what happens, that when the day is done, we will feel the sheets against our skin and the soft pillow under our neck and maybe even the touch of a lover—or we at least will dream such simple pleasures.  But Blues is not the landing from great height, it is not the crash that ends our hopeful flight.  In some senses it is the land itself, the reassuring ground, the good earth.  When we feel lost amid the broken pieces of our hearts, the Blues can show us where to stand; a foundation solid for our feet and a place receptive of our tears.