My last post got me thinking about moods - what we call them and what they mean. My thanks to a reader who sent in a thoughtful comment on the topic.
I wrote in my latest Substack that I had not known cheerfulness since at least the age of 18. A commenter suggested some things I might do to rectify the issue but I don’t think there’s anything to rectify.
Does that mean I lead a dull, depressed life? Not at all! In fact, it’s a rare night if my wife and I go to sleep without laughing like hyenas about some silliness or some five-year-old level joke. But laughing at 11pm is no guarantee of waking up in a great mood. My mornings are mostly morose and plodding. I get out of bed, creaking bones and all, and start my obligatory 5K (3 miles) walk, leaving the house around 6am when the air outside is still breathable. After my jaunt and a shower, my hours are filled productively until about 2pm. I do suffer the occasional bout of anxiety - be it about a pending medical result, or some family business or just because I’m an anxious and bitter old Jew from a long line of Jews who had plenty to be anxious and bitter about. Mid-afternoons are often useless: my brain is foggy, my body aches and my mind wanders: too many tasks and none of them joyful. Some fill me with dread. On some days the dread stretches into the evening. You might ask “what dread?” but I would not be able to answer. I worry about something but know not what, I miss something but cannot name it. After dinner, I’ll watch TV but only have patience for an hour or two of it. Then it’s up to my office with a glass of oat milk and cookies and I write again for an hour or two, then spend another hour watching airplane videos: I’m an aeronautics buff.
I enjoy reading history books more than anything. I write fiction but hardly read any at all. It takes tremendous effort to get interested in the lives of fictional characters - yet I want readers to be interested in mine. I’m truly selfish that way.
I love flying! Watching the world from thirty five thousand feet fills me with awe and joy. I’m above it all, sitting in (relative) comfort, piercing puffy clouds, watching skinny ribons of rivers slowly wend their way far below me. There is a touch of otherwordliness to flying: for a few hours I don’t give a damn about anything. I am floating. I have, as Canadian/American WW2 pilot and poet John Gillespie Magee observed, “slipped the surly bonds of earth” - surely the most beautiful phrase about flying ever written. Sadly Magee himself died in a mid-air collision during the war.
I love making music much more than listening to it. In that, too, I’m a selfish bastard. I want others to listen to my music but I’m not a very good listener myself. Moreover, when I do listen (mostly while driving), I listen exclusively to 1930s and 1940’s jazz, with the occasional peppering of Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, the triumvirate of 20th century trubadours who have changed my life. On the jazz side my favorite by far is Louis Armstrong - the greatest popular music genius who ever lived.
Occasionally, I get an attack of profound nostalgia and in those moments I put on my headphones, listen to The Beatles’ “Revolver” or dial up 1960s Czech rock bands on YouTube and I sob quietly: “A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu”. Fortunately, my pity parties don’t last long.
I like conversations but the older I get, the shorter my attention span. I don’t like phone conversations at all. “Before you dial, ask yourself ‘is it textable’?”
When I was a full-time musician - before the CCP and its underlings in the “west” crashed our world - I played 3 or 4 shows a week: mostly local gigs, some concerts and occasional tours in other states/countries. Days were filled with practicing my guitar, writing music, arranging for other musicians, driving, playing my shows, returning home just before midnight. That used to be my favorite hour: changing out of my gig duds into a sweatshirt and shorts, fixing myself a tuna sandwich and a mug of tea, putting my feet up on a hassock, slurping my hot tea, enjoying the night silence of the house.
I could go on enumerating the various activities that I enjoy - I haven’t even mentioned my daughters and grandkids. Still, never throughout the days and weeks as they pass, do I feel “cheerful”. In fact, I’m not sure what the word means. Does it mean optimism and a “chill” attitude? If so - “it ain’t me, babe…no, no, no it ain’t me babe…it ain’t me you’re looking for, babe” I think pessimism is a healthier attitude to life: you seldom get disappointed and you see life the way it is, not the way you’d want it to be.
I don’t like people much - but I adore dogs and most animals. To be perfectly honest - if cheerfulness means a smile plastered to your face, telling everyone to have a great day and over-laughing, then I want nothing to do with it. I want to be free of it. “Like a bird on a wire. Like a drunk in a midnight choir” Like that. Leonard Cohen was the least cheerful songwriter of them all - and he managed to say something about us, confused humans, that cheerfulness not only does not express - but actually negates. There! I told you I was a bitter old Jew