The blues often portrays a process in which one engages passionate reality, especially as colored by such “negative” emotions as depression and anger, and survives the engagement without being seduced by false hope. This lecture, illustrated by taped musical examples, will be about the ways in which a characteristic irony and wit-the tragicomic art of the blues-can instruct us in emotional engagement and detachment.

Related Workshop: You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had: The Life-Affirming Art of the Blues

WILLIAM WILLEFORD, PH.D., is an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He is a Jungian analyst, trained in Zurich, and is president of the Pacific Northwest Society of Jungian Analysts. He is the author of The Fool and His Scepter: A Study in Clowns and Jesters and their Audience, and Feeling, Imagination and Self: Transformations of the Mother-Infant Relationship. He has been an ardent listener to jazz and the blues for most of his life.