We All Sing the Blues

There was only so much that I could take and what was left behind, I had to detach myself from indefinitely. I took what was mine, what I needed to get by, and moved to the city to engross myself in their culture, to become their music, share their blood, to prove that my soul was searching for a connection, and that this connection could never be found at home.

I told my parents that I wanted to be a musician, but not just a musician, a blues musician, a guitarist that captured the soul, sweating it out of six steel strings with swollen hands, fingers tipped callous from the pain of plucking the heart out of every note, song, and solo night after night as if I would never play it again, but that wasn't good enough: An Armenian blues guitarist? I've never heard of such a thing . . . What, do you want to be black? . . . Armenians don't know how to play blues music; they play their own music. That's who you are.

The block I moved to was full of musicians -- my people. It was summer, hotter than King or Collins, Waters or Johnson, hotter than any summer I'd spent at home; the air was thick with sound, smelled golden fried. That's what I left home for, to get a taste of myself, to smell the loneliness of pride, to dig so deep that no skin could hold back what was inside. I wasn't running away from home like Mom said, and I wasn't shucking responsibilities like Dad said; I was giving myself a chance to live outside of their Armenian world, a world full of odd rhythms, sublime scales that touched me so much, it nudged me from under its fixed foundation. I moved away from their world to discover a new one based on who I was, my music. I thought I had learned everything there was to know about music -- enough to make it on my own, enough to discover where I belong. I moved into an old, emaciated row house that looked as cold and faceless looking in, as looking out.