My Top 10 Sad Songs (in alphabetical order)

1. "Why Won't You Stay" - American Music Club
Mark Eitzel, doing what he does best: laying his soul bare and making you feel his pain.

2. "St. Swithin's Day" - Billy Bragg
Thanks all the same
But I just can't bring myself to answer your letters
It's not your fault
But your honesty touches me like a fire
The Polaroids that hold us together
Will surely fade away
Like the love that we spoke of forever
On St. Swithin's Day

3. "If You See Her, Say Hello" - Bob Dylan
And though our separation
It pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me
We've never been apart

4. "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You" - Colin Hay
The former Men at Work frontman proves he's no '80s has-been with this lovely ballad (props to Zach Braff for including it in Garden State)

5. "Crawling" - Cheri Knight
Knight is a criminally-overlooked country/folk singer from Massachusetts. Her second and final album, 1998's The Northeast Kingdom, is a masterpiece. This track is a duet with the Goddess of Duets, Emmylou Harris, and if you're not crying in your beer by the end, you probably have some emotional blockage.

6. "How to Say Goodbye" - The Magnetic Fields
I'm overjoyed to hear about your wedding
I'm writing you to wish you every blessing
I'm overjoyed to hear about your wedding
I'm writing you to wish you every blessing
And I'm so happy I could cry
Oh baby, you know how to say goodbye

7. "River" - Joni Mitchell
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had

8. "Walking On a Wire" - Richard and Linda Thompson
I wish I could please you tonight
By my medicine just won't come out right

9. "16 Days" - Whiskeytown
I got 16 days
15 and those are nights
Can't sleep when the bedsheet fights
Its way back to your side

10. "One By One" - Wilco
One by one my hair is turning grey
One by one my dreams are fading fast away
One by one I read your letters over
One by one I lay them all away

"Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love."

“…I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude…”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” (which I still need to finish after a long hiatus)

Thus begins Hal Hartley’s short yet powerful 1991 film Surviving Desire, which I just re-watched. One of Hartley’s great strengths is unconventional screenwriting. Dialogue which initially seems like nothing more than pretentious literary references and psychobabble from the mouths of bored, disaffected slackers, bohemians and grad students slowly but surely gets under one’s skin and wields significant emotional power.

In addition to utilizing characters as vessels for interesting passages from classical literature, as with the Dostoevsky quote above, Hartley’s characters engage in circular, repetitive exchanges, or simply repeat fragments of dialogue a number of times, giving the viewer license to interpret its meaning on multiple levels. For instance, a couple of times in the film, Sophie, a bookstore clerk, stands in the middle of the store, surrounded by customers walking by and ignoring her repeated, timid attempts at service: “Can I help someone? Does anyone need any assistance? Does anyone need any help?” Like the conversations on continuous loop, her attempts to reach out, consistently rebuffed, speak to a larger truth, namely how difficult it is to connect with, and truly know, other people.

Hartley returns to the themes of loneliness and isolation again and again in his films (see also Trust and Simple Men); yet one is left with an odd sense of hope at the end of each. His characters, despite their preternatural awareness of their own short-comings and the absurdity of life, continue striving to connect with others, unfrightened at their own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Ultimately, Hartley is a humanist, and he clearly cares for his neurotic characters, who survive desire and thus give us hope as we bumble through our own lives and relationships in search of human connections and understanding.

Please allow me to introduce myself...

Hi there,

I've finally started my own blog, in an effort to distinguish myself from the masses. My newly-acquired uniqueness brings to mind this bit from Steve Martin's brilliant 1978 album, A Wild and Crazy Guy:

"Now let's repeat the non-conformists' oath: I promise to be different! (audience repeats) I promise to be unique! (audience repeats) I promise not to repeat things other people say! (audience laughs, repeats) Good!"

I look forward to weighing in on a variety of subjects, news reports, polls, films, trends, and all manner of pop-cultural flotsam and jetsam. I hope you will weigh in as well, via the comments field.

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to my friends and intrepid blog pioneers: PBR Chicken, Non_Seq, Binulatti, and The Westering Hills. Check out their blogs.

SHP