Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Lessons From Blues Man: Pictures From The Inside

When I walked onto the subway platform in Chicago early this morning, a street musician was belting out the blues. He sang a *wicked* blues and played a sweet blues guitar. I walked straight over to him and deposited cash. Talent always deserves recognition.

At the end of the song, Blues Man turned toward me standing at the other side of the platform, smiled, and said, "That's how you sing the blues. You have to sing it with feeling. It has to come from inside. You have to feel the words. That's what words are, pictures coming from the inside."

What a great insight. His music was expressing feelings "from the inside". Those feelings were associated with pictures: images of what he has experienced. What made his music authentic was that his words, aided with music, captured the pictures from inside.

We get into trouble when our words are divorced from our internal pictures. Trading well is like playing a wicked blues: we capture a feeling and express our pictures from inside.

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