Townes Van Zandt once was asked why all his songs were so sad. His response, I think, summarized his life experience:
I have a few that aren’t sad, they’re hopeless. About a totally hopeless situation. And the rest aren’t sad; they’re just the way it goes, kinda. I mean, you know, you don’t think life’s sad?
His song, Waitin’ Around to Die, is a sad tale of hopelessness, a story about a man’s hard life in which drug addiction, alcoholism, loneliness, abandonment, and abuse all seemed more appealing than simply “waitin’ around to die.” Most of the lyrics of his music I’ve listened to reflect a deeply melancholic take on life—understandable, given the monsters he faced in his life…alcoholism, drug addiction, emotional trauma, broken relationships, and the like. While direct experience with personal demons is not required to suffer the consequences of seeing their impact on the world around us. Van Zandt was both a victim and, like so many lyricists who write and perform “sad” songs, an observer. Van Zandt died young, at age 52. He stopped “waitin’ around to die” when he welcomed the New Year with his own death. He died (officially of cardiac arrhythmia, though his addictions are said to have contributed heavily) on January 1, 1997, after being badly injured in a fall at his home…just a few days before Christmas the month before.
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Complaining that the night sky is too full of stars, or the ocean is too deep, is an exercise in futility. Many complaints fall into that category—a category most people would call pointless or absurd or wasteful of mental energy—yet the fact that such grievances are utterly trivial, does not stop them from being made. Too many among us frequently incur fruitless expenditures of limited emotional resources that could be more productive if invested more wisely.
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The morning sky is very light beige, with just a tiny hint of creamy violet creating a tint I rarely see in the sky. Is it that I rarely see the color, or that I simply fail to notice it? Conscious, thoughtful observation is necessary if we are to have any realistic hope of actually “seeing” the images that cross before our eyes. Unless we make a point of taking notice, our senses ignore opportunities to experience the world around us. The items sitting on one’s desktop go unrecognized, just as typographical errors often are missed when we scan the page of a book. We see what we expect to see, not what is put before us. While staring at my computer monitor, though, the sky expelled both the violet and the beige, replacing them with a gentle grey that I see as comforting; others might view it as dull or boring. Yet others may not give the color of the sky a thought; it might go unnoticed. Emotional context paints the sky with a different brush and a different color than does physical context. Context. Contrast. They are at once different; but, the same. Seasons behave in much the same way; early Spring gives us green tomatoes, while Summer colors them red. Or purple. Or a combination, reminiscent of a chaotic battlefield littered with yellow flowers that would be out of place somewhere else.
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Some memories belong in permanently sealed lead boxes, inaccessible for all time. I would pay to incinerate them, even if I had to accompany them into the flames.
