Feelin' Fine...Be That Way

Today's 30 Songs in 30 Days is brought to you by sheer exhaustion. I have been up until about 3:00 a.m. or later for about the past month, and I think it finally hit me like a ton of bricks. Good news is, I will probably be in bed by midnight tonight, but the bad news is, my body is going to flip me off about an hour into that, and I will be wandering the house like a peevish ghost in no time. You will hear my haunted swears in your dreams.

Day 04 – A song that makes you sad

I talked about sad songs that make me happy in a way. If I am depressed, I might throw on some John Cale and hear his deep melodic voice sing songs of woe, but it doesn't make me cry. It comforts me.It validates my feelings. It tells me that I'm going to be in a great mood tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, maybe the day after.

It's like getting one of those hugs from a person that doesn't quite know how to hug you which makes it all the more endearing, as opposed to the person who will hug you if they see you scowling. That just means I wasn't wearing my glasses and was trying to read something of a wall, hands off Handsy McHandserson!

But there are songs out there that reach into your heart and start poking at it with a needle. You may have been hanging outside on a sunny day just moments before, soaking in how wonderful life is, only to go inside and put your music on shuffle when out of the depths of your playlist comes out a song that sags your shoulders and makes a few small fat tears start to drip from your face. After the song ends, you throw on a little Huey Lewis for a pickmeup, because what the hell? Where the hell did this come from? There are a few songs that do that to me. Some because they are just damn sad, and because there was a difficult period on my life when I heard them and they remind me of being down with the sadness.

This one is a culmination of the above. I was going through a breakup, (Okay who hasn't) when I started listening to Beck's Sea Change. Holy depressing. This album is about his own going through a breakup, and he spared all of us the grueling duty of writing a bunch of shitty poetry about ours by writing a naked and heartfelt album chock full of gorgeously articulated grief.

Whether you are a Beck fan or not, or whether you memorized all the words to Loser like my friend and I did in Junior High, this album is worth giving a good hard listen to. It's so raw, his voice is so full of broken beat down emotion. It cracks with pain that is so authentic, that there is no way he could have been feigning it when he recorded these songs.

So when I hear Guess I'm Doing Fine a number of factors come into play. It's like having a friend show up on your doorstep sobbing and you just happen to be able to feel every single thing that they are feeling at that time without going through it yourself at that exact moment. Or being at a funeral of someone you don't really know, but seeing all of the people around you, the look of loss on their face and despair, and suddenly you are right there with them. Or, if you were going through that breakup yourself and this little ditty popped on, it feels like he wrote the song JUST for you at that moment.

The lyrics aren't as such that come off as whiny woe is me. They are a genuine feeling of loss and pain when everything is fresh off the suck press. You wake up one day and everything looks and feels so gray. Songs don't sound the same to your ears, it's just a record that the needle is scratching in an ugly manner over and over and over again. You are so exhausted from the blue snuggie of depression that has enveloped you that you can barely bring yourself to get out of bed to get a glass of water.

When Beck gets to the chorus, that's the real kicker for me:

It's only lies that I'm living
It's only tears that I'm crying
It's only you that I'm losing
Guess I'm doing fine

Right there where he says "Guess I'm doing fine" that's it. I mean it's such a sarcastic bald-faced and obvious lie. But what else can you tell yourself when you have hit this point? It's that or yes, drown yourself in the toilet. He gets to the end of the song and sings the chorus one last time, and his voice gets so overwhelmingly emotional, he is wailing so hard that it really does bring on a wave of boo-hoo.

I have to commend you Beck, for successfully being able to bum me out every single time that this song comes on.

Full lyrics are:

There's a blue bird at my window
I can't hear the songs he sings
All the jewels in heaven
They don't look the same to me

I just wade the tides that turned
Till I learn to leave the past behind

It's only lies that I'm living
It's only tears that I'm crying
It's only you that I'm losing
Guess I'm doing fine

All the battlements are empty
And the moon is laying low
Yellow roses in the graveyard
Have no time to watch them grow

Now I bade a friend farewell
I can do whatever pleases me

It's only lies that I'm living
It's only tears that I'm crying
It's only you that I'm losing
Guess I'm doing fine

Press my face up to the window
To see how warm it is inside
See the things that I've been missing
Missing all this time

It's only lies that I'm living
It's only tears that I'm crying
It's only you that I'm losing
Guess I'm doing fine (x2)



And here, go cry yourself to sleep on your huge pillow!