Even though my predominantly European forbearers included sharecroppers, my body knows very little of suffering compared to those who bore the load of laboring as slaves in industry’s progressive shadow. I was not born into the front lines of class warfare and did not inherit the marks of dwelling in our culture’s underworld for generations. I know in my bones what is blue through loss and death, but also through the lens of my and my family’s privilege and belief in the American myth of Progress.

 

Privilege does not make me exempt from walking and learning the dark paths of suffering; a privileged upbringing puts on me a burden of authenticity. I learned and continue to learn that the blues that are real originate in and are true to experience itself and do not leap to reframe losses as gains. “Authenticity” suggests to me an obligation to suffer and recover with a critical eye on tendencies toward self-inflation. This critical suffering is for the sake of my own future but also that of my family and the portion of the world on which I have an effect. It may be that Bluevolution offers the possibility of tomorrows and a modest reconstruction of daily life that is authentic, inspiring, and within human scope.

 

Perhaps an amount of time equal to that in triumphalism and getting on with my life might be better spent dropping onto the dirt floor of humanity’s history and weeping, washing the bodies of the dead, and lamenting injustice until the halls of power ring with the ache of it. This is not a typically Progressive response, but it is a real one and might help shape a more nuanced sense of making progress. It could be revolutionary in its contribution to the sanity of those who are alive today. It might represent an evolution in understanding the human condition. If that is the aim, however, it probably makes sense first to return, in search of depth and nuance, to the moment of the most dramatic shift in the way “evolution” has come to be understood.