The Blues

From David Dye's "World Cafe" from WXPN.
Guests: The Swell Season, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irgolva, podcast released 1/4/10. Partial transcript of the interview with Glen Hansard speaking.

..."And when I read the poem, the reoccuring line in the poem is "because the poet makes grief beautiful". And the idea is that by singing, you sing your sorrow into gold. And his whole idea is that when we dig into ourselves, we speak about the sadness and we speak about the stuff that is kinda ugly and dark in ourselves and we speak about the shadow places, that there is and alchemy in the expression. There's an alchemy and it turns into good stuff."
"The idea that you're in a bar and listening to the guy singing in the corner saying "I've lost my girl. I don't know where I'm going to sleep tonight. My job is ending in a week." We're sitting there drinking beer cheering him on because somehow we're connecting with him on a very fundamental level. The blues. For some reason when people express the blues, we enjoy it. And it's about honesty. Because when you are honest that when the transformation can happen. If you're lying and you're just putting pretty words together then, generally speaking, no magic is allowed through."