I’ve recently had this uncomfortable relationship with happiness.
Not with being happy, but with its metrics. Everywhere, everything, everyone seems to be measuring happiness. Valuating happiness. Making metrics of happy. As if it were something to be measured and planned for and designed. “Are you happy?” people ask when we meet. What are they asking, I wonder. Could their definition be the same as mine, and really, wouldn’t it be more interesting to talk about compliments, or pancakes, or the detail in a particular line, or the view, or that we got a really good cross breeze going in the right way? Small moments. Happiness in motion. And then the conversation could begin.
I just watched the film "Wristcutters" and fell into love with the dreary backdrop, the desperate characters, Tom Waits (once again), and the soundtrack, particularly Gogol Bordello's, "Through the Roof and Underground." I can't stop listening to it, really. It's one of those songs where the lyrics are so intense they read like a novella. While the song is paired well with the movie, for cultural and deep psychological reference, it also stands beautifully on it's own and I can't stop thinking about it or the lyrics.
Somehow the lyrics fit how I feel about my surroundings and how I am always looking for escape in both poetry and mind:
When there's a trap set up for you In every corner of this town And so you learn the only way to go is underground When there's a trap set up for you In every corner of your room And so you learn the only way to go is through the roof
Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground
And as we're crossing border after border We realize that difference is none It's underdogs who, and if you want it You always have to make your own fun
And as the upperdog leisurely sighing The local cultures are dying and dying The programmed robots are buying and buying And all secluded freaks they are still trying trying
Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground Ooohoohoooh through the roof, and underground
And as the boy scouts learn to read between the lines The silver rabbits hop between their fathers' lies And boy scouts ask "Where? Where do they go?" They go to the country that they only know
Just like their meanings they lay between the lines Between the borders their real countries hide The strategigo's saw their advertise Their strategy of being is one of in-your-face disguise
Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground!
And when their own walls they will a-crumble, And all the systems will be discumbumbled, Around the stump of bigotry, our own Serebryanye zayazhy vodyat horovod! [Russian]
Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground Ooohoohoooh through the roof, and underground Ooohoohoooh through the roof, underground Ooohoohoooh through the roof! Underground!
Serebryanye zayazy vodyat horovod! [Russian]
Through the roof! And underground! Through the roof! Underground!
