“Yes I have them, them walkin’ blues.” Taj Mahal

            I like mysteries and thrillers where the good guys win and the bad guys lose.  I think this is true for most readers.  I know there’s a market for noir stories that end up ambiguously, or with evil overcoming earnest virtue, but I’m not interested in that stuff.  I find it depressing, or vaguely sociopathic.  And no fun whatsoever.

             That happy endings are far more common than stories with decent people being ground into dust suggests that most people are inherently good, because they want stories that reinforce their beliefs and hopes for humankind.

            This is my happy thought and I’m sticking with it.

            I know that evil exists in the world and that bad things happen to good people all the time.  I don’t need books I read as escapism to remind me of that.  I really don’t know the ultimate score card of good vs. evil – who’s had the upper hand, historically.  But since, despite our travails, the world has evolved mostly to the betterment of the human population, a reasonable guess is that the good guys have the edge. 

Movie critics seem to think there’s something intellectually deficient in a person who prefers happy endings.  This explains why so many Scandinavian movies are critically acclaimed.  As if dreary settings, low light, crystalline ice hanging off scruffy beards and babies frozen in the snow delivers some deeper understanding of the human condition.  If that’s so, they can have it. 

         I can imagine some thinking, “Life isn’t just a Disney movie.”  Have you seen Dumbo or Bambi lately?  Old Yeller? You want to talk about grim and depressing.  And Walt wasn’t even Scandinavian, as far as I know. 

            Moral ambiguity is another thing, though how it resolves decides the question for me.  In The Maltese Falcon, the most important modern detective novel, spawning the subsequent Bogart movie, we really don’t know where Sam Spade comes down on the probity scale until the end.  I and others have maintained forever that Hammet was richly influenced by Hemingway’s anti-heroes – cynical lads with robust vices who only reveal their essential morality when the drama starts to wrap up.  (The best movie version of this ethic is Casablanca, another film with Humphrey Bogart.)

            It’s sort of a triangulation.  Good and evil can only be explicated in opposition to each other.  The third point in the diagram is how one feels about what’s being contested.  The pessimists who want to be affirmed by evil’s triumph, and their cousins who delight in destruction and despair, have plenty of stuff out there to enjoy.  Have at it.  It’s just not for me.  I reject the notion that this work represents the full extent of our experience on earth, that it reveals some regrettable, but inevitable reality.  Or that this sensibility conveys upon the believer some greater intellectual facility, suggesting people like me are too dim witted to appreciate the underlying certainty of a dark existence.

            Just for the record, I’m also not a fan of pure Pollyanna.  I find it treacly and nauseating.  Everyone but me and a small, surly coterie of old curmudgeons loved the Barbie movie.  Ick.  While I cleave to the belief that humanity tilts toward the positive, at least in our hopes and desires, unfettered optimism is delusional.  The facts on the ground say there are nuances, and lots more grey than black and white, and that every day is a contest that requires clear thinking and resolve. 

           

        As a musician for most of my life, I’ve had the privilege of playing a lot of the blues.  I think underlying these compositions is a way to navigate the teetering balance of suffering and joy.  Bad things happen, which you have to face up to, but then again, there are other things along the way that can lift your spirits, even in the midst of pain.  The texture of the music itself reflects the mood of this conflicted sentiment.  It’s soulful, but fun, inspiring sorrow and contentment in equal measure.    

            “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all”, according to Albert King, who still managed to wink at us through the lament.