Sullivan is a man who lives and breathes the blues. It is the one thing in life that gives him air. When the scene opens Sullivan is preparing for his day, cleaning off his suit and putting his hat on as the first subway trains arrive. He begins to sing the blues to the passerby’s hoping for a bit of change. Why is someone so talented stuck singing the blues in the subways of New York? Sullivan shares with us the day that he met his wife while he sang in the music studio, she walked into the room and stole his heart but when she tells him she is pregnant around the same time that he gets the biggest offered the biggest contract of his life he has a choice to make. Does he quit singing the blues to be a father and husband or does he walk away from his family to live out his dreams? He decides to walk out on his wife and daughter who he was not present toe ever see born. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that without family he is nothing, by this time his wife is gone, and his baby girl is gone with her. Sitting on the subway he has nothing left but to sing the blues, to tell his story hoping that one day he will see them again. Sadly, Sullivan never finds them, but at his subway stop there is a girl, a girl that he feels he knows, is it his daughter? He may never know, but something about her gives him calm and makes him sing another note to live another day.
The Choice (also published in DI)
I’m just an old Black man. Doing what old Black me like me do. Dressing in my best suit, I know it don’t look like much but it’s mine, singing what I feel in my soul… now that’s all mine. “I know my baby left me. Left me high and dry. I know my baby left me with nothing but gray clouds in my sky cuz she’s a low down woman. Steeling love everywhere she goes. She stole it from the start so you betta watch your heart. I wrote that one for my wife she ain’t my wife no more but she was and that is exactly what she did. She came into my life, stole my heart and ran out on me. Almost sounds like I had nothing to do with it, like while she was stealing my heart I was standing in the corner smoking a cigarette. I was there, doing the shit I always did, the low-down dirty shit that made her take her love away from me. See I sings the blues. Do you know what that means? It means that I take all the bad shit I’ve done, give it a beat and make it do what it do. Singing the blues won’t let you lie. Gotta be strong enough to look at yourself in the mirror and see you for who you are. Singing the blues is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done especially out here on the streets. But the streets ain’t so bad. I got a job where I don’t pay taxes, a place to call home where I don’t pay rent, my crisp suit and I got my hat. That’s all a blues brotha like myself needs is a suit and a hat. A blues brotha, yeah.