Sometimes I Feel Like a Sad Song...

Ah, there is nothing better than music...and nothing better than sad music. I am not sure why, but I have always had a strong affinity for very sad songs. I don't just mean songs with sad lyrics, though, I mean sad songs. A lot of my favorite classical music is very melancholy, but it expresses itself without any words at all. (And, in fact, some songs with sad lyrics don't really count as sad songs in my book. I know one called "On Love, In Sadness," which, while a good song, is still pretty upbeat, so it just somehow doesn't put one into the same pensive mood that, say, a Chopin nocturne does.) I love music that brings a tear to your eye and makes you feel as though your heart would break. It's not that I am a pessimistic or despondent sort of person, generally. On the contrary, I'd say I'm a pretty happy chick as a rule. I just find an unmatched beauty in moments of quiet melancholy. It's always been that way, for me. I loved to play slow songs on the piano, and I never liked it much when my piano teacher tried to get me to play gospel or ragtime or just about anything upbeat. She thought I was a pretty strange duck. "You want to play classical? Not pop? Or country? Or gospel?" I was especially fond of slow songs in minor keys; I still am, in fact. I love artists like Sarah McLachlan and Josh Groban, who themselves have a penchant for mournful tunes. And there is nothing that compares to the dark and brooding aura of a Rachmaninoff piece.

So...why? Why on earth would any right-minded person want to feel sad, anyway? (Of course this begs the question of whether or not I am actually in my right mind. I am going to assume that I am for the sake of the argument, but I suppose it's understandable if you disagree.) Sadness is generally considered a negative emotion...something we try to chase away with our Prozac and who knows what else. I honestly have no clue why I seek it out. All I know is that my preferences very often tend toward sad things. It isn't just music. Movies like Dead Poets Society, books like A Separate Peace, plays like Hamlet... Maybe it just reminds me that I'm alive and human. Maybe it provides a necessary emotional balance or something. As my man Jason Mraz says,

"It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other..."

Or...maybe I'm just nuts. There's always that possibility. Ah well...at least I'm happy being sad.