Cheerful title, I know...
I have noticed a tendency in some of the films I've been watching and the music I've been listening to that suggests that real and genuine life is what happens when you are miserable. All this happiness is OK but for a real experience you need to be unhappy. For example...
"I saw your flag on the marble arch, love is not a victory march - it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah" (Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley).
The idea, I think, is that if you love someone, it's the painful bits that really count. While I think you do learn a lot about relationships when it's hard, I suspect this sort of sentiment has led to some of my more melancholic and pessamistic tendencies.
So, is it that lots of artists are miserable and write miserable songs? Or is it that I am miserable and look for films and songs which make me feel better about that? Or is a real and genuine life one with mostly dark bits? Is it better to be a tragic heroine with real feelings or one of those shallow happy people?
And if you can answer all those questions, can you also tell me why all the emails I get at the moment are angry German spam?
Cheers.
5 comments:
It's probably a mistake to go that far IMO. To me, real life is what happens when something different happens - good or bad - and it changes you a little.
Sanctus does that to me nearly every week. I learn something I didn't know, or learn a little about someone that lets me appreciate them as a person better, and that little change in my life stays with me.
Maybe it's a personality thing? I find it hard to learn from negativity.. the only thing I tend to learn is how to get out of it!
Can't solve your spam problem though.. you can have mine if you like.. I've got 2,500 emails in my spamtrap at the moment.
This is going to make you feel any cheerier, but personally my favourite lines from "Hallelujah" are:
"Maybe there's a God above,
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.
And it's not a cry that you hear at night,
It's not somebody who's seen the light,
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"
Spine shivering everytime for me.
You write as though melancholy is a bad thing (although the Hippocratics thought melancholia was a diseased caused by too much bile).
I embraced melancholy a long time ago. I may appear zany and cheerful, but I am driven by a deep-seated pessimism underpinned by a nice healthy depression.
I try to make the most of today because my experience of life is that it is a series of painful trials with a few breathing moments in between.
So, speaking from the viewpoint of the gutter, I find sad songs and films utterly uplifting!
And no, it's not because there is an abundance of sad films and songs (just look at a top ten chart and count the happy/sad ratio - it's probably weighted towards happy).
It's because directors like Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) understand my occasional loneliness, and musicians like Jason Martin (Starflyer 59) understand my general sense of inadequacy.
If Churchill can cope with his 'black dog' of depression, you and me are laughing, my tragic but beautiful heroine.
Danke für Messwert.
eyan
life isn't really all that bad when you compare yourself to other people and what you could have ended up with, or without?
As for sadness and melancholy, since when did you stop and think how tragic the world was when you were really happy? Since when did you wallow in misery and try and find someone else who knew what you were going through when the ship was sailing fine? And snce when did anyone except brits and yankies appreciate spam?
s.
The comparison isn't with other people, it's with myself. Things that make me happy are often external things: Matt loves me, I can mostly do what I want, I have friends who laugh at my jokes. The things which make me unhappy are internal: frustration with myself, letting myself down, realising that I will never be or do all the things I would like.
So do you think that unhappiness is the glue which holds society together and forces us to look for people who may understand us and help us to understand ourselves?
See the postsecret website (blog above) - it made me realise that there are people out there who have all the same horrible secrets inside - the things they hate and are ashamed of, those memories which are incredibly painful... Maybe everyone is the same, in some way, as me.
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