I could be so happy if I just quit being sad
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I heard Heartless Bastards sing about desire one day and observed that it was the most engrossing thing I heard that day, and I felt unhappy. It made me especially unhappy thinking there can not be two equally engrossing songs in the same record, so that record's other songs can only be less engrossing than that song. I thought wrong. That song, the album opener, called The Mountain, is equaled in engrossingness by another song, the album closer, called Sway.
It happened that The Mountain by Heartless Bastards would be the first album short-listed to my most loved from last year, which I grant isn't new news to be rambling on about. I bring it forward now in musing that the particular error in judgment must be why I am unusually happy. I may think there can not be two equally happy times spent with the same person, nor two equally happy people in the same moment. For example, I am prone to reveling in a good feeling and in the same breath thinking, about the other party, "There is no way you're feeling this good." I may be wrong.
Could Be So Happy
The Cincinnati, OH (now Austin, TX?) blues-rock group continues on with what was started in the debut album, Stairs and Elevators from 2004, but also, there is something else stunning, something that sounds sharply like good sense, about the latest album. And anyway, Heartless Bastards' Erika Wennerstrom, not unlike Celebration's Katrina Ford, is in my list of covetable approaches to singing songs.
The Mountain
And so you peak into the mountain where your desire goes.
Oh, having the space to know the way it is coming down.
Sway
I tell myself these bitter, these bitter days will end.
Oh, for way too long, these things, they occupy my mind.
Locating MOG account...
Comments (25)
I have been to Cinncinatti, and Cleveland for that matter, and I can tell you, 7 months out of the year, anyplace, even Texas (Although I hear Austin is more Taint than Hole, and I mean that in the best possible way) is better than anywhere in Ohio.
Texas!
Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth." — Mark Twain
I could be happy for the rest of my life with my Cinnamon Girl
;-)
.............Well, the music is killa, as usual. I'm reminded of something abraham lincoln said......"People are about as happpy as they decide to be"
But what about what the great poet Martin L. Gore, who said:
"people are people, so why should it be
that you and I get along so awfully?"
Happiness has to be over-rated. I know some people who aren'r happy unless they're all pissed off bout something. I know other people who rage at the happiness of others. All I know for sure is.......A Lincoln must have been mad. LOL
"It made me especially unhappy thinking there can not be two equally engrossing songs in the same record, so that record's other songs can only be less engrossing than that song. I thought wrong." Your're certainly right about thinking wrong! What about the possibility that some of the record's other songs can be engrossinger and not just less engrossing? Doesn't that open up possibilities of your existence being filled with even more bliss that it already is? You're right about the rarity of two equally engrossing songs. I assume you've noticed that from your aesthetometer app, set to engrossingness mode, (as I have on mine) that no two songs ever have the same reading. Notice also how Heartless Bastards' lyrics have much higher readings for mystification than they do for mysteriousness? These details that technology serves up to us are what gets me out of bed in the morning beaming with expectation!
Spike sir, you're making my head hurt
genderblender, I must be doing something right, for a change. :-)
consider that your geographic locator pin grazed my backside. yes, you have my attention. I would like to tell you how these Heartless Bastards play in my backyard or that I was most certainly aware that they played the barely-south-of-Cincy Southgate House as recently as last Dec 26. but no [sigh], as usual, it takes my furthest away trusted to tell me whats going on down the street. well, Ghost already told you about Ohio winters..."Hold Your Head High" poeb.
Happiness is not a life without problems, but rather the strength to overcome the problems that come our way. There is no such thing as a problem-free life; difficulties are unavoidable. But how we experience and react to our problems depends on us. Buddhism teaches that we are each responsible for our own happiness or unhappiness. Our vitality - the amount of energy or "life-force" we have - is in fact the single most important factor in determining whether or not we are happy.
True happiness is to be found within, in the state of our hearts. It does not exist on the far side of some distant mountains. It is within you, yourself. However much you try, you can never run away from yourself. And if you are weak, suffering will follow you wherever you go. You will never find happiness if you don't challenge your weaknesses and change yourself from within.
Happiness is to be found in the dynamism and energy of your own life as you struggle to overcome one obstacle after another. This is why I believe that a person who is active and free from fear is truly happy.
I was in Cleveland for a Conference between Christmas and New years in 1999. We left via taxi from a Bar District down by the lake and grabbed a bite to eat about 3 blocks from our hotel around 4PM. I do not remember the name of the Restaurant, but the hotel was at St. Claire and 6th. The eatery was a bit west of there. Regardless, when we left the place, the doorman said "Let me get you a Cab..", we said "Nah, its a few blocks we will walk it" (In our suits and long coats, no hats, no gloves, no muffs mind you). He then insisted that he get us a cab, we told him "No thanks" knowing perfectly well it was some scam he had worked with a cabbie to grab a few extra bucks.
Anyway, we maybe made it 15 steps before slowly turning back to the door.. granted it would have been a quick turn, but the wind, and the cold does things to you quickly there. It was a needle prick pain in your face... a thousand pricks. And it felt as if you where wet and naked. The clothes made no difference, your body had locked up, and turning "quickly" as it where was physically impossible.
We took our cab happily.
That night I looked out my back window onto a mall of sorts, the stairs of a courthouse looking building and beyond that the RnR HOF then blackness beyond it. The streets where clear, it was 9PM.
I woke up at 6AM to the alarm, started a pot of coffee, and looked out the window, and the streets and landmarks below me where white. Not a dusting mind you, but covered, a blizzard of Virginia Proportions, at least 6-8 inches. I shrugged and thought "ahh.. lake effect snow.. now I know", and closed the curtain, hopped in the shower, got out, threw on some clothes, went down, grabbed a bagel and fruit, came back up, got dressed, turned on the TV, and threw open the curtains for the view. It was 7:45AM, 15 mins before the first meeting downstairs.
"What the...." I looked outside to find not a stitch of pavement, of sidewalk, of park bench tainted with a flake of snow. And not a Truck, a Shovel or "Emergency" crew in sight. Just people walking to and fro.
"How in the hell did they get rid of all that snow so fast?" I asked one of our hosts that day.... "He just grinned and said "That.. bah, it was just a dusting"
F*^$ Cleveland, its cold there. The "Free Stamp" is goofy, but the HOF was kewl, and the food that week, from the dives to the 4 stars was amazing.
Do you want to know why the Browns never win? Because THY'RE FRIGGIN COLD is why.
I concur. Being in an enviable position in life to someone...well, who is not in my position, I must say that beyond the bitter is the sweet, and beyond the sweet there is...well, you get the picture. There are a handful of times in my life I have been irravocably happy, and looking back they were good times, and there are more to come. I guess my point is, I've learned to appreciate the moment more, and dwell less on what's around the corner. This all kind of sounds so cliché as I type it, so I digress...
Anyway, don't know how I missed these guys (or should I say gals?), but it's sounding golden to these ear drums, and better late than never!
Guys, thanks for leaving thoughtful comments, I'd like to mention that I appreciate 'em. I did also say that I am, as of posting, in fact, happy if unusually so. (:
Ghost, I've been to neither Ohio nor Texas. I suppose every place is its own character, and there is something to love and hate about it. I love being somewhere unfamiliar, it's a total rush.
Nice anecdote. I don't even have a realistic grasp of the aforementioned dusting. Every now and then, I would allow a scammer to proceed with their scamming when it's amusing to observe ... and then either blow their cover at the last minute or have them know they got away with it only because I let them. That, of course, is not to mention the few times I was actually fooled.
John, I think it's safe to say I live by something like that mantra. However, for him to verbalize it, that Mark Twain must've never had his spirit broken like I had. (Kidding about Twain.)
Dave, hah. That's 'cause you are a dreamer of pictures... ;d
Gore's poetry is a two-headed beast. By awfully, he either meant people get along badly or get along very well.
Jeff, I thought you in particular would like Heartless Bastards. 'tis true that just about everything coming into our lives is rooted to a choice we've made. I, for one, choose now to be unusually happy rather than not usually happy.
GB2, happiness is one of those things we aspire to endlessly for the sake of aspiring for it. Or, in other cases, we keep ranting about aspiring to it even when we've stopped aspiring to it, which may or may not be what this post was. We're human beings like that.
Charles, oh, I know, my brain tells me definitely that the above assumptions are erroneous, and at the same time, that the glass is half empty. The truth is it has too often been proven wrong that the first single (or carrier single) off an album is the best track in it. Personally, said singles almost never end up being my favorite songs. In the same vein, there's two people out there who came out of a shared moment feeling equally happy.
Once more, you have taken a post of mine somewhere else. Yes, I can see the higher register of mystification over mysteriousness, thanks for pointing it out! Wennerstrom's best moments in songwriting are in uncomplicated lines that are fascinating not for how she wrote them but for what they could be referring to.
Scott, you were needed in this post, Ohio reprazent! As I've said several times before, there's a lot of me that seems at home in wintry locations. It's too bad the times I was in potentially cold places, it was Indian summer ... by all separate counts, eerily.
Try to catch Heartless Bastards at a hometown gig, yo! I think you'll be delighted.
inrum, I am in complete agreement that the opposite of happiness is fear. I remember saying in a post / comment once that, at times I am feeling particularly unhappy, I then try to get over my fear and not my sadness. I have seen for myself how my own "life-force" has carried me through the toughest times, even when it seemed like I was too paralyzed to help myself.
As for this post, I mostly just like to brood, which doesn't affect my happiness. (8
Tyler, irrevocable happiness, wow, there's something to truly want, based on how good it felt in all the times I felt it. I am a "live in the moment" sort of person all the way, so much so that I hardly make plans, to my own detriment. And I know what you mean ... how does one muse on happiness exactly?
I no doubt wanted to say, with this post, that Heartless Bastards is a potentially great band and that there's a lot to be loved about their album, The Mountain, even if I do not think at this point that it is a brilliant record. At the very least, if you're into their kind of blues-rock music, I hope you check them out!
I do like her voice but the music isn't doing much for me. It's not all that interesting to my ears. Such is life eh?
Aww that's too bad, Aug, but I won't despair. I love freedom of choice like that. ;d ...And we have a host of other things we can both talk about, besides!
Whoa..the philosophy class. I forget who it was, but I definitely heard about the HB's here on MOG many moons ago. Thank you for the reminder. If I remember correct my aesthetometer moved when I checked 'em back then, as Blues Rock with a good vocal often does.
Fear has been a big part of my happiness equation, failure being my number one fear factor. Over the years I've tamped it down quite a bit, but it is always with me.
Cody, i can relate. there were too many things i did not bother trying out of fear of failure. i truly hate disappointing myself although i guess i've become better-adjusted over time.
aside from blues rock, i think the psychedelic rock, folk, and Americana influences of Heartless Bastards are going to delight your aesthetometer. the tracks in the latest album are pretty solid, to boot.
Low expectations can have value.
oh, the optimism! ;d
That's me, Mr.Sunshine.