“Standin’ on the
corner, dollar in my hand,
Lookin’ for a woman who’s lookin’ for a man;
“Tell me how long, do I have to wait?”
Cassi Creek:
Hesitation Blues is an often covered blues tune dating back at least to
W.C. Handy. It carries the timeless
lament “when will I get my share of the communal pie?”
The lyrics,
as handed down and commonly performed, pertain almost entirely to sexual
encounters. Possession of a dollar, the
key to all other possessions, becomes the crux of the search by the
singer. That the woman may be willing to
trade her time and energy for that dollar fits easily into the direction
indicated by the song. We who were once
middle class have watched as the giants of Wall Street finance turn the nation
into an immense whore house where staying housed and fed becomes harder every
day.
Hesitation
occurs for many reasons. There may be
rent to pay, an instrument to recover from pawn, or the singer may be waiting
for his paycheck to filter down from his employer who will hang onto it until
the last possible second in order to squeeze the final bit of interests out of
what he holds.
Hesitation is
all too familiar to the working poor, and is becoming the standard of life for
the once-middle class as well. The private
sector is changing in nature. The small
business owners are no longer private sector.
That title should be rightly used only in reference to the large
corporations that control finances and job off shoring in 21st
century America.
The rest of
us are joining in another chorus of “Hesitation Blues” while we wait for the 1%
to let a little of the money we’ve made for them with our labor to trickle
down. But like the poor guy on the
corner, we’re in hesitation mode, and we are less and less likely to have that
dollar at the time we’re standing on the right corner.
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