Love, Sex, Movement, Hope

Richard Wright, from his foreword to Paul Oliver's The Meaning of the Blues:

Yet the most astonishing aspect of the blues is that, though replete with a sense of defeat and down-heartedness, they are not intrinsically pessimistic; their burden of woe and melancholy is dialectically redeemed through sheer force of sensuality, into an almost exultant aflirmation of life, of love, of sex, of movement, of hope.

Photo by Michael L. Abramson, via American Photo, from his exhibition "Michael L. Abramson: Pulse of the Night," at the Columbia College Chicago Library.