Ain't Satisfied

If you listen widely to blues & blues inflected music, one theme that reemerges in various guises can be simply put: Ain't Satisfied. "Mississippi" John Hurt recorded a song by the name "Got the Blues (Can't Be Satisfied), where the singer tries whiskey, but it don't seem to satisfy him. So then he buys his gal "a great big diamond ring," then catches her fooling around, disavows her, breaks down his gun barrel, kills her, then cuts up her bedmate, and ends by saying that he "still ain't satisfied." I love the song, not just because John Hurt was a phenomenal guitar picker and performer, or because it shows the futility of changing the way you feel without changing the way you think. It is also powerful because it reflects something deeper about the bluesman's ethos, and about the nature of this country's people. First let me show you what I mean 'bout blues.

Many other seminal bluesmen & women touch on this theme--take Robert Johnson's immortal lines, "A man is like a prisoner, and he's never satisfied." It can be love, work, dreams, or many other experiences that prompt dissatisfaction in a soul. That feeling of restless disquiet is significant to me because in blues that I love, the feeling applies to the experiences conveyed by the music and the music itself--the blues musician constantly innovates; not because he's merely restless, not just because the act of performance allows him to transcend the draining embroilments of the lonesome world:

his innovation is an act of hope, it says, "I can make this better. Ain't satisfied yet, but I'm bound to strive for my personal vision of greatness--in my music and my life."

Obama gave a much-quoted and noted speech in Philadelphia last year, which is often called his "race" speech, but really had another theme running just as deep throughout it: a more perfect union. Obama is an effective politician because he is in many ways sensitive like a bluesman: he feels the urgent need in his audience (the country) for something that is lacking, and he has the passion and compassion to lead the audience to transcend wrenching struggles. Of course, he also has the necessary leadership tools, adaptable perspective, and patience to draw reality into the world he envisions. [That's a post for another day: exploring the way blues musicians are agile at shifting perspectives.]

It's not just that blues music tinges or saturates every genre of American song. In the restless spirit of the archetypal bluesman, the innovative jazz musician, a rock revolutionary like Hendrix or Dylan, the folksy mystic dynamism of Joni Mitchell, or the diabolical words of Immortal Technique, a common thread runs throughout; it is the belief that this world I see can be transformed for the better, and I'm damned if I won't do my part, and contribute to that betterment in my own way.

I still ain't satisfied, and don't believe I ever will be satisfied, and I probably wouldn't want it any other way. I love a heritage that instills a sense of visionary urgency and wry hopefulness in its people. This is the land where the recognition that it isn't and never will be perfect exists before the first word of the Constitution itself. It's the Preamble that states it: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union..."

You ain't satisfied, so find that music and that way of living that makes you believe you're moving toward somewhere better than today's circumstance. That's a true blues life.