Monday, January 25, 2010

Lord, I smell trouble

Dear gentle readers,

Something terrible happened this weekend. Given a horrible situation, I acted in what I thought was the most ethical and conscientious manner. At this moment, I'm unable to tell if I've unintentionally caused irreparable harm. In retrospect, it is difficult to say if I would have behaved in the same way.

In the words of Tina Turner:

Lord knows I've tried,
I've tried to do what's right,
Five whole long years of stayin' home,
both day and night,
And I smell a whole lotta trouble,
Lord I smell trouble ahead of me.
But oh, worries and troubles,
I wonder why they just won't let me be.

Go watch the clip, Tina can sang it. At the time, did everyone else get it?

Her face is contorted with pain; the pain of knowing the man she loved was beating and raping her, the pain of hiding this from the rest of the world, the pain of watching Ike become a cocaine addict, the pain of staying with a man she once loved because she was afraid for her children.

Loving someone despite their fatal flaws can be a dangerous habit.

After she left Ike, she sang pop music. She was happy. The scary aspect of her tale is that the blues she sang with Ike came from a very real place, a very honest place. It was beautiful and ugly.

Some times I think that this blog is like a Greek tragedy. All the action happens off stage.

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