It must be done.
What morality cannot prevent, government must.
In The Hinterland, we are dry. We square dance and Viennese waltz.
But in The Blues, it rains day and night.
Those who ran, who abandoned our yellow farms and mines, were useful servants. They were wives. And brothers ne’er-do-well but still beloved. They were named Isaac and Ida, but in the slick streets of The Blues have become Louis or Luella or Lulu.
At the thought of them, your chins may quiver and eyes grow misty. That is forbidden. You risk being reported as melancholy.
Forget those who have gone. Think of your better sons. Think of fair corn-silk daughters ready to debut and marry profitably.
You must protect them against the trumpet, from the piano with its wrong-headed mixing of keys black and white.
Citizens, build a great wall around The Blues. Make it of massive blocks. Drag and hoist them with your own hands, servants and ponies having become so rare.
Limestone against the libertine!
Say it and be strong. Limestone against the libertine!
Good.
Now, drop to your knees and put your hands into prayer.
In your hearts so God will know your pledge to this noble labour, and aloud so all citizens will know it too, say “I will not be blue.”
Shout it. Again. Chant it.
Too much praise can scarcely be given to such music.
Notes:
- “West End Blues” traditional jazz by Joe Oliver; recorded in 1928 by Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five; Armstrong trumpet and vocals, Earl Hines piano, Jimmy Strong clarinet, Fred Robinson trombone, Mancy Carr banjo, Zutty Singleton cymbals
- some considered jazz to be “Devil’s music”; dangerous, sinful, corrupting
- The Blues is a crowded city; constant drip, drip, drip of people from The Hinterland; people crawl through the sewer into The Blues, jump from the old oaks around the city; trees that’ll soon be felled; wood carved into warning signs
- surrounding The Blues is The Hinterland; dusty, parched, yellow; corn and rutabagas, skinny pigs; citizens must think of the place as golden, although it’s golden only for the farm lords and mine owners.
- The Blues is rainy, foggy, silvery
- The Hinterland is relentlessly sunny; everyone is windblown; dry skin and cracked lips
- The Hinterland goes to church twice on Sunday; at The Great Hall, there’s square dancing for the young and waltzing for their parents; an annual cotillion despite dwindling numbers of debutantes; prizes for the biggest bow, the tiniest waist, the lowest curtsy
- The Blues is run by a council of bartenders, musicians, and the only greengrocer, dentist, and schoolteacher in the city; they drink burnt coffee; there’s rarely a quorum
- The Hinterland is run by an old man with a megaphone; wears robes startlingly white in this yellow land; sits in The Great Hall with books of decorum and lists of punishment, pounds with a gavel
- people in The Blues are young and old; anyone can be blue
- in The Blues are ponies that have escaped from uranium mines in The Hinterland; they keep the weeds short, may be harnessed only on Thursday afternoons; long lines of bright washing dance between the tenements
- The Blues lives day-to-day; no demands, just lots of feels
- loud, sharp, smoky; choking guitar, soaring trumpet; bent notes
- swinging, shuffling, strutting; improvising; sticky floors; wine and bourbon; sweaty hands held too tightly; spike heels, long red nails; beaded dresses, some with ragged hems and holes under the arm; wet roosters never crow too early
- on the shiny floor of The Hinterland’s Great Hall are footprint guides to square dancing and waltzing; stepping off the patterns is forbidden
Karen Walker (she/her) writes in Ontario. Her work is in or forthcoming in Brink,The Viridian Door, The Hoogley Review, Overheard, Centaur, and elsewhere. @kawalker.bsky.social