Happy/Sad

I've encountered a phenomenon lately that I like to call 'Songs that lie to you by having a deceptively perky tune which causes you to not notice how depressing the lyrics are.'*

*Note to self - come up with shorter term for this.

Case in point - The song 'The Wrong Direction' by Passenger.  Now obviously Mike Rosenberg is clearly a leprechaun, thus firmly disproving several of my earlier posts (but what can you do, right?)

At one point I actually posted a link to this song on my Facebook page with a brief word about this fun little song I'd stumbled across, only to receive a couple of responses along the lines of 'Are you on crack?  Those are the most depressing lyrics ever.*'  At which point I was compelled to actually listen to the lyrics and concur that they were indeed depressing as all get out.  Which renders the nice lady enthusiastically playing the trumpet next to the wading pool somewhat inexplicable, IMHO, but there you go.

* But seriously - Have you never listened to... like.. ANYTHING by The Smiths?

I mention this because my friend Brian's father passed away last night.  Today is Brian's birthday. And because I know some extraordinarily wonderful and unusual people (and Brian would be on the upper end of the spectrum for both of those adjectives) he requested Facebook posts that combine the two sentiments ('Happy Birthday' and 'So sorry for your loss') in some sort of amusing way*

*I should mention - this is a man who once signed a condolence card to me with the words 'Grandma died because you didn't love her enough.' **

**And then realized that the card was still being passed around the office for others to sign.*** 

***In desperation he taped a small post it note with the words 'do not read' over his message so that the rest of the office wouldn't believe him to be a heartless monster.****

****I can't even begin to tell you how long I laughed about every single facet of that story.

There are somewhere along the number of 200 responses to his post with various attempts at combining the 'happy' and 'sad' messages in some way that alchemically becomes 'funny' and then 'healing'

About halfway down the list there is a response from the smartest man I know.  I'm not going to identify him here, because his head is already big enough as it is.*

*I kid, Jim.  I kid because I love.

Jim said - 'Happy sorrow...I guess that's what it's like to be an adult.'

So... maybe it's a mistake to try to separate the perky tunes from the sad words.  Maybe that's exactly where they're both supposed to be.

I'll leave you with the song that started this whole train of thought*

*But seriously - what the Hell is Nuno Bettencourt doing with his hair???