depression – Page 2

“I don’t want to throw out any sacred things. What…is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.”

– Vonnegut, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

I’ve found music is one of the only really great cures for depression. Yesterday I listened to Carl Perkins’ “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby” probably half a dozen times:

well they took some honey from a tree / dressed it up and called it me

everybody’s tryin’ to be my baby

i went out last night ’bout half past four / fifty women knocking on my door

everybody’s tryin’ to be my baby

Now, there’s some debate as to whether Perkins wrote the song or not (there was a swing band in the 30s who did a song by the same name), but regardless: what possesses somebody to write such a ridiculous song? Do you think Carl Perkins’ life was really like that?

I prefer to think that whoever wrote the song was just using their imaginations. What if, instead of being lonely, a million women were chasing you around? What if, instead of being a nobody, everybody in the world wanted a piece of you?

There could even be a little trace of menace in the song. I mean, does this guy ever get any alone time? If you swapped “to be my baby” with “to get my money,” you’d have a paranoid celebrity song, wouldn’t you?

Either way, I like the song, and it makes me feel happy.

There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws.

— Anton Chekhov

Yesterday was one of those days that make you want to hang up your hat. Throw in the towel. Etc.

Chalk it up to reverse seasonal affective disorder. Or maybe it was all the meat last weekend.

Anyways, the man with the hammer was knocking, and if you know me, you know I don’t have much of a poker face. I’m a pretty good liar, but my face tends to read like an open book. Good thing my great ambition is to be an open book. Ho ho. Thank God for Castrato Rock.

Today was much better. Today was Toots and the Maytals. Play “Louie, Louie” or “Pressure Drop” in your car with the volume full blast and the windows down, and just see if you can stay depressed.