You get your greatest thrill from singing the blues

I was reminded recently of a passage from T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone (1938), a novel which I read over and over as a child and have probably not looked at in twenty-five years:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

I don't often think of myself as happier than other people, but I must be happier than White because I understand that sentiment but disagree with his angle. I am at the moment awake much too late because I discovered the music of Goree Carter, electrifying bluesman and seminal rock-and-roller; I gather that "Rock Awhile" is the famous one and I'm not surprised, with its iconic over-driven guitar licks and its exhilarating sense of having blasted in from the future (possibly having collected its horn section from '70's art punk along the way), but the flagrantly dissonant "Bad Feeling," the blistering "Hoy Hoy," and the blues-dissing "She's Just Old Fashioned" all must have hit 1949 like a bomb with a pencil shoved through its speaker cone. I'm delighted. An hour ago I'd had no idea he existed. I feel better about the world knowing he was in it. That's not as beautiful as White's catalogue of countered negatives—knowledge as last refuge, fragments shored against personal, universal ruin—but it seems to be true. It makes me happy to find out things I didn't know. And then it leaves me with problems like the 20/20 obvious fact that early rock and roll is terrible music to wind down to. The piano is jumping, the guitar is on fire, the saxophone just blew through "Jingle Bells" because it could. spatch sent me some Wynonie Harris and that didn't help at all.

So that all the mangroves' mud and sand could never bury me

I consider it unreasonable in the extreme to have anxiety nightmares about something that already happened, but that's how I started my day. I worked until my brain hit a wall and then I lay under a cat and did nothing except stare at TCM and then fall asleep, which I hope was good for me.

muccamukk is looking for recommendations for Jewish vampire fiction. I've named all the ones I can think of and am now feeling more than vaguely as though I should contribute to the literature myself.

forestofglory is recommending Jewish SFF in general. I want credit for stuffing Tiny Wittgenstein into a desk drawer and mentioning myself in comments.

Good grief, there's a picture of me in the Slovenian news. That'd be the Ig Nobels.