Queen of the Blues

To me, Billie Holiday was the 'queen of the blues'. Her inspiration, Bessie Smith, also rules the roost but it was Holiday's musical styling, her unique vocal 'slipping' behind the beat, that draws me into her saucy soul struggle as a woman and artist in pain. She chose abusive men (including a mafia 'enforcer') and addiction (self-medication) in order to weave her way through it all. This is nothing unique, but especially sad in the face of great achievement and talent. Of course, surprise, surprise, her childhood was a minefield of abuse, neglect and violence.

I can't possibly ream off the names of all the artists who have described the hell of depression as a backdrop to their work and the cost of continuing in it. The fruit of this private, personal struggle can have as horrific an end as death by suicide or it can be the fertile soil for ongoing genius and/or expression. Is there a way of knowing who will choose what? Who succumbs, who sustains, who lives, who dies. That, i think, is one of the mysteries of our existence.

There are predictors and events which increase probabilities of one or the other and i think all that saves us is the hope and faith that we can be relieved of the deepest, strongest, soul crushing pain and the prayer that if we do "bottom out" that we can sustain the blindness of depression and work our way back to the "light".