Life is Life

The news came out across the wires. Jeff Healey dead at 41. His name was usually prefaced with phrases like (Canadian) Legend… or Guitar Legend…
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iCoD11PSfR-HSsvGt1Dl2AFB-pGgD8V5UPI00

According to PBS "The blues is one of America's greatest musical treasures. A roots music form that evolved out of African-American work songs, field hollers, spirituals, and country string ballads more than a century ago, the blues is the foundation of virtually every major American music form born in the 20th century, including jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and hip hop." When it began it was/is "Rural music that captured the suffering, anguish-and hopes-of 300 years of slavery and tenant farming, the blues was typically played by roaming solo musicians on acoustic guitar, piano, or harmonica at weekend parties, picnics, and juke joints. Their audience was primarily made up of agricultural labourers, who danced to the propulsive rhythms, moans, and slide guitar."

It is, in other words essential, the essence of much the music we love today. Myself, I think Jeff Healey and I think Blues. They are interwoven. The heart of the Blues is its grounding in the certain knowledge that life is life. The heart of Jeff Healey and his music was his pure love of music and his desire to play in the face of any obstacle. The essential truth of Jeff Healey’s music, not just words, but just its very presence that life is life.

Life is short
Life is hard
Life is wonderful
Life is to be deeply lived
Life is Life.

For myself I see this reflected in the heart of faith, whatever particular derivative we gravitate to, it beats with the sure knowledge that life (in all its messiness) is love. The best faith, like the best music, comes out of suffering but doesn’t focus there.

Can you see the light?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBBCJ68mC4c
Will you turn your angel eyes on me?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYz_LHKrgDY
Little Sister?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqU9RZqvFKY
At a roadhouse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIZywo3PBTE
Sometimes you just get stuck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtailKBfvyY