Sadness Is A Blessing: Sad Songs, Quotes, and Movies That Will Make You Happier

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”- Virginia Woolf

"Melencolia I" by Durer

Have you ever watched a sad movie, read a sad book, or listened to sad music and somehow felt happier or more inspired having watched/read/listened to them? I have and still do. When I'm feeling my lowest (which can be pretty damn low), I like to put on the most depressing music or movies and escape from the world. I come out the other end feeling rejuvenated and content. If you're anything like me, and I know you are out there, people, please enjoy this post full of the sad movies and songs that are my go-to's when I am at my saddest.

“Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are.” - Mark Haddon

It's good to know that you are not alone in your sadness, too, right?

“Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one's past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I've-seen/lessons-I've-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers.”- Dave Eggers

 

 1. "Sadness Is A Blessing" by Lykke Li: Sometimes I try and fight the sadness and anxiety. That hardly ever works. It's much better to just give in and let all of the feels in and then let them leave. As Lykke Li says in this song, "Sadness I'm your girl".

2. "Asleep" by the Smiths: Sometimes sleep is the only respite you get from the sadness (that sounds so emo, I love it).

3. "Valentine" by Fiona Apple: Oh unrequited love. You wish that they would notice you, you would do anything for them. You know you should move on, but you're a "fugitive too dumb to flee". If you watch Girls on HBO (which you totally should be), you'll remember this song in one of the best scenes of season 2. 

Hey, guys, let's all take a looksie at another great scene from season 2. And hey, Fiona Apple is mentioned again. Lena Dunham and I are clearly in the I-adore-Fiona-Apple club:

4. "The Nicest Thing" by Kate Nash: When I was a young undergrad student I used to listen to this song on repeat and cry. I was THAT cool. I think we all just want someone who understands us and our quirks. It reminds me of that poem that Drew Barrymore's character in Never Been Kissed recites about the boy that she likes: "Does he notice me? Does he hear my heart screaming his name-- sometimes it's so loud I think the Gods can hear my pain. His voice is so mellifluous, oh to get just one small kiss." Yeah, I clearly was super popular with the menfolk in college. Obvi.

5. "No Children" by the Mountain Goats: A super sad and anger-filled song that sounds happy. Fooled ya!

6. "I Know You Care" by Ellie Goulding: Ellie's album, Halcyon, has become my go-to record when I am going through a breakup. She wrote it after she went through a tough one, too. Every song on the album represents a different stage in getting over the pain. This one shows up near the end of the album and it's all about the overwhelming feeling of sadness of the relationship ending and losing what was once so close to you.

7. "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'!" by the Velvet Underground: This song is great when you've just got nothing left. No sadness, no anger, just numbness. It's kind of a wonderful feeling, rock bottom. As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." RIP Lou Reed.

8. "Always Gold" by Radical Face: Sometimes people don't understand you, except for that one special person. This song is about losing a friend or loved one that just could never get comfortable with living. They maybe didn't realize how much they meant to other people, though.

9. "The Last Time I Saw Richard" by Joni Mitchell: This sadness is temporary. We're all going to "build our gorgeous wings and fly away" it's only a phase "these dark cafe days".

10. "More Adventurous" by Rilo Kiley: Just listen to the lyrics. 

Movies:

First things first, if you haven't seen it, go see Blue Is the Warmest Color immediately if not sooner.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2. Lost in Translation

3. Broken English

4. Like Crazy

5. Blue Valentine

6. Hannah and Her Sisters

7. Closer

8. Melancholia

9. Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight

10. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

11. Beginnings

12. It's Kind of A Funny Story

13. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

14. Girl, Interrupted

15. Elegy

16. American Beauty

17. The Hours

18. A Single Man: 

"A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. It’s as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be."

19. Away We Go

20. Atonement

"It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy." - Dostoevskii

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” - Tolstoy

"She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

“The pain was quite extraordinary. And yet also weirdly welcome and restorative, bringing him news of his aliveness and his caughtness in a story larger than himself." - Jonathan Franzen

The Reader in Exile, Apathy, and Blue Is the Warmest Color

 From Jonathan Franzen's (1995) essay "The Reader in Exile" in How to Be Alone

"The electronic apotheosis of mass culture has merely reconfirmed the elitism of literary reading, which was briefly obscured in the novel's heyday. I mourn the eclipse of the cultural authority that literature once possessed, and I rue the onset of an age so anxious that the pleasure of a text becomes difficult to sustain. I don't supposed that many other people will give away their TVs. I'm not sure I'll last long myself without buying a new one. But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone."

 "The New American Apathy" by Mazarin

"Once upon a time, characters inhabited charged fields of status and geography. Now, increasingly, the world is binary. You either have or you don't have. You're function or your dysfunctional, you're wired or you're tired. Unhappy families, perhaps even more than happy ones, are all identically patched into CNN, The Lion King, and America Online. It's more than a matter of cultural references; it's the very texture of their lives. And if a novel depends on the realization of complex characters against a background of larger society, how do you write one when the background is indistinguishable from the foreground?" (I really just enjoyed this quote because of his hilarious mentioning of The Lion King and America Online -- those two really did a number on society...)

La Grande Odalisque by Ingres

Also, last night I saw the movie that everyone is talking about "Blue Is the Warmest Color" starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux (Midnight in Paris; La belle personne; Farewell My Queen). Although the movie sits pretty at 179 minutes, it went by in a flash. I was so raw, real, sexy, and depressing (as any stereotypically French movie should be). I have the biggest lady crush on Adèle Exarchopoulos now (already had a huge one on Léa). If you get a chance to see it, GO!

Adèle Exarchopoulous

Adèle Exarchopouous & Léa Seydoux as Adèle and Emma

Ahoy Sexy! Frances Ha

Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach (2012)

Synopsis: Frances lives in New York, but she doesn't really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but she¹s not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren't really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness.

Greta Gerwig is one of my new favorite actresses. I loved her in Hannah Takes the Stairs and her random appearances in No Strings Attached. Most importantly, though, Adam Driver (Yes, the ADAM from Girls) is in this movie for a bit. As is a spontaneous two day jaunt to Paris, which really really really made me want to drop everything and charge a flight to Paris for the weekend.

Check out this article.

 

 

 

 

Waitress: Sorry, but the card didn’t go through. Do you have another card you want to try?

Frances: Oh, shit, sorry. Um, uhh this is a debit card.
Waitress: Only credit cards or cash.
Frances: Okay. I’m so embarrassed. I’m not a real person yet.

 This scene makes me so happy.

It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes... but - but not because you're possessive, or it's precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it's funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's - That's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. 

There's so many things I want to do, and I end up doing not much.

C: Did you ever keep a journal when you were a kid?
J: Yeah. On and off, I guess.
C: It's funny, I read one of mine...from '83 the other day.
J: Yeah?
C: And what really surprised me is that I was dealing with life the same way I am now. I was much more hopeful and naive but the core, and the way I was feeling things, is exactly the same. It made me realize I haven't changed much at all.
J: I don't think anybody does. People don't want to admit it, but it's like we have these innate set points and nothing much that happens to us changes our disposition.
C: You believe that?
J: I think so. I read this study where they followed people who'd won the lottery and people who'd become paraplegics. You'd think one extreme is gonna make you euphoric and the other suicidal. But the study shows that, after about six months...as soon as people had gotten used to their new situation they were, more or less, the same.
C: The same?
J: Yeah. Like, if they were basically an optimistic, jovial person they're now an optimistic, jovial person in a wheelchair. If they're a petty, miserable asshole, then they're a petty, miserable asshole with a new Cadillac, a house and a boat.
C: So I'll be forever depressed no matter what great things happen?
J: Definitely.
C: Great.
J: No, come on, are you depressed now?
C: No, no, I'm not depressed. But sometimes I worry I'll get to the end of my life feeling I haven't done all I wanted to.
J: Well, what do you want to do?
C: I...I want to paint more, I want to play my guitar every day. I want to learn Chinese. I want to write more songs. There's so many things I want to do, and I end up doing not much.
J: All right, well, let me ask you this: Do you believe in ghosts or spirits?
C: No.
J: No?
C: No.
J: Okay, what about reincarnation?
C: Not at all.
J: God?
C: No.
J: All right.
C: That sounds terrible. No, no, no. But I don't want to be one of those people that don't believe in any magic.
J: So then, astrology?
C: Yes, of course!
J: There we go.
C: That makes sense, right? You're a Scorpio, I'm a Sag, we get along.

Que la vie en vaut la peine -- Louis Aragon

Que la vie en vaut la peine

 

C'est une chose étrange à la fin que le monde

Un jour je m'en irai sans en avoir tout dit

Ces moments de bonheur ces midis d'incendie

La nuit immense et noire aux déchirures blondes.

 

Rien n'est si précieux peut-être qu'on le croit

D'autres viennent. Ils ont le cœur que j'ai moi-même

Ils savent toucher l'herbe et dire je vous aime

Et rêver dans le soir où s'éteignent des voix.

 

D'autres qui referont comme moi le voyage

D'autres qui souriront d'un enfant rencontré

Qui se retourneront pour leur nom murmuré

D'autres qui lèveront les yeux vers les nuages.

 

II y aura toujours un couple frémissant

Pour qui ce matin-là sera l'aube première

II y aura toujours l'eau le vent la lumière

Rien ne passe après tout si ce n'est le passant.

 

C'est une chose au fond, que je ne puis comprendre

Cette peur de mourir que les gens ont en eux

Comme si ce n'était pas assez merveilleux

Que le ciel un moment nous ait paru si tendre.

 

Oui je sais cela peut sembler court un moment

Nous sommes ainsi faits que la joie et la peine

Fuient comme un vin menteur de la coupe trop pleine

Et la mer à nos soifs n'est qu'un commencement.

 

Mais pourtant malgré tout malgré les temps farouches

Le sac lourd à l'échine et le cœur dévasté

Cet impossible choix d'être et d'avoir été

Et la douleur qui laisse une ride à la bouche.

 

Malgré la guerre et l'injustice et l'insomnie

Où l'on porte rongeant votre cœur ce renard

L'amertume et Dieu sait si je l'ai pour ma part

Porté comme un enfant volé toute ma vie.

 

Malgré la méchanceté des gens et les rires

Quand on trébuche et les monstrueuses raisons

Qu'on vous oppose pour vous faire une prison

De ce qu'on aime et de ce qu'on croit un martyre.

 

Malgré les jours maudits qui sont des puits sans fond

Malgré ces nuits sans fin à regarder la haine

Malgré les ennemis les compagnons de chaînes

Mon Dieu mon Dieu qui ne savent pas ce qu'ils font.

 

Malgré l'âge et lorsque, soudain le cœur vous flanche

L'entourage prêt à tout croire à donner tort

Indifférent à cette chose qui vous mord

Simple histoire de prendre sur vous sa revanche.

 

La cruauté générale et les saloperies

Qu'on vous jette on ne sait trop qui faisant école

Malgré ce qu'on a pensé souffert les idées folles

Sans pouvoir soulager d'une injure ou d'un cri.

 

Cet enfer Malgré tout cauchemars et blessures

Les séparations les deuils les camouflets

Et tout ce qu'on voulait pourtant ce qu'on voulait

De toute sa croyance imbécile à l'azur.

 

Malgré tout je vous dis que cette vie fut telle

Qu'à qui voudra m'entendre à qui je parle ici

N'ayant plus sur la lèvre un seul mot que merci

Je dirai malgré tout que cette vie fut belle.

 

- Louis ARAGON  dans Les yeux et la mémoire – Chant II – 1954 .

 

One week vegan but a lifetime of fabulous

Longest shift at work ever (because I was salivating over my dinner plans)

Outfit Details:

- Dress: Revival (Thrift store in Iowa City)

- Jacket: Ann Taylor LOFT

- Boots: Target

- Leggings: Forever21

- Earrings: H&M (in Brussels, Belgium!)

Dinner:

Butternut Squash Ravioli *

with Roasted Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts, and Yellow Onions *

Side Spinach Salad with Sundried Tomato & Garlic Dressing

Glass of  Shiraz

I sprinkled walnut & pecan pieces over the ravioli and roasted vegetables

"Keep reading my mom's blog, guys!"

*I substituted coconut oil for olive oil. And obviously didn't use parmesan cheese on the veggies. All of the vegetables are organic. My tummy is happy. 

Veggie Red Curry with Black Eyed Peas

One of my favorite styles of cooking is Asian-inspired cuisine. For the most part, it's easy to cook, caters to an abundance of vegetables, and has some of the most flavorful sauces. I love to cook Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Thai-inspired dishes. Tonight for dinner, I decided to prepare vegetable red curry with black-eyed peas. I would be remiss to say I knew that black-eyed peas were something other than a pop group starring Fergie, Will.I.Am and a couple other dudes until recently. This is a shame, because black-eyed peas are so PRETTY! 

To prepare the black-eyed peas (1/2 cup -- I did this earlier in the afternoon), I followed these instructions: 

Part One: Soaking the Beans

1. 1
   Rinse the beans. Place the black-eyed peas in a colander and rinse them with cool running water.
   • Rinsing the black-eyed peas removes dirt and stray hulls.^[1]
2. 2
   Place the beans in a pot of cold water. Make sure that the water covers the black-eyed peas completely, but do not fill the pot so high that it will boil over when heated. Cover with the lid of the pot.
3. 3
   Boil the water. Heat the beans and water over medium-high heat until the water reaches a steady boil. Continue boiling for 2 to 3 minutes.
   • Most beans are soaked in cold water for several hours, but black-eyed peas can be soaked in hot water to reduce the amount of time it takes.^[2]
   • It is not essential to soak your black-eyed peas, so this step can be skipped if you are short on time. Soaking the beans causes them to become softer, however, and it also helps to reduce the risk of digestive upset.
4. 4
   Let stand. Allow the black-eyed peas to sit in the warm water for 60 to 90 minutes.
5. 5
   Drain and rinse. Pour the contents of the pot through a colander to remove the stale water. Rinse the black-eyed peas once more with cool water.

Later that evening, I prepared the rest of the dish.

Ingredients:

- 1 can of coconut milk (I used Light but it doesn't matter)

- 3 tsps of red curry paste 

- 1 tsp brown sugar

- 1/4 tsp garlic salt (to taste)

- 1 stalk of organic celery (chopped into 1/2 inch pieces)

- 3 leaves of organic dino/lacinato kale (torn into medium-sized pieces)

- 1 leave of organic collard green (torn into medium-sized pieces)

- 1/2 organic yellow onion (cut into 1/4 inch slices)

- 8 organic button/white mushrooms (cut vertically into quarters)

- 10 organic brussel sprouts (cut into halves)

- 1/2 organic daikon radish (sliced into 8 slices then each slice cut into quarters)

- 2 cloves organic garlic (pressed)

- 1/2 serrano pepper (chopped finely)

All of the vegetable servings were just chosen at random. I like certain vegetables more than others. There is no rhyme or reason to the portions.

The rest of the instructions are as follows:

1. BRING coconut milk to simmer in large skillet on medium heat. Stir in curry paste and sugar until well blended; bring to boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer 5 minutes.

2. STIR in vegetables. Cook 3 to 5 minutes or just until vegetables are tender-crisp. 

I then heated the black-eyed peas in a covered glass bowl in the microwave on high for 35 seconds. Lastly, I poured the vegetable curry onto the black-eyed peas in the glass bowl. I sliced some fresh watermelon as a side dish and enjoyed my vegan vegetable red-curry.