A Songstories Prompt

“I Don’t Want to be Sad Again”

Life with Camera Obscura

Maybe ten years ago, well after the album kicked out in 2009, my friend Les introduced me to Camera Obscura, particularly the title song of that album, “My Maudlin Career.” He surely listed a few reasons why I needed to hear it, but time and distance fade and fuzz and get all distorted, so forgive me, man, I just don’t know what to do with myself anymore.

But, I loved the song the moment I heard it, and though I’ve played it for others, including classes full of college students, most listeners just look at me like one of us knows what’s going on and one of us doesn’t. I like to think I’m the one who knows, but even my ego won’t go that far always.

The song is about a break-up, a woman’s refusal to continue in a relationship that, as lead singer Tracyanne Campbell suggests, has caused her to suffer:

“I’ve harbored worried feelings like they were worth protecting You say I’m too kind and sentimental like you could catch affection Oh in your eyes there’s a sadness enough to kill the both of us Are those eyes overrated? They make me want to give up on love…”

Except a break-up doesn’t seem to be the course she’ll take after all:

“I’ll bail you out again, I’ve got the readies I’m not a child I know we’re not going steady Your pain’s gigantic but it’s not as big as your ego I promise not to abandon you, please let me go…”

Or is it?

Hell, I don’t really know, and in some ways don’t care. Mainly, I keep hearing that piano, over and over, trilling through the sadness, the echoes of love and fear, and all that used to be in a former career of love.

That piano that takes me/us to the final words:

“I’ll brace myself for the loneliness Say hello to feelings that I detest This maudlin career must come to an end I don’t want to be sad again…”

Repeated twice more, the effect is to back me up to the wall, to make me think of that moment in Art Spiegelman’s Maus, when Art asks his shrink, Pavel, to tell him what being in Auschwitz was like (A constant screaming BOO!!!) and how he feels after surviving for all these decades:

“Mainly, I feel like crying.”

For those of us on the depression spectrum, virtually anything can rear its ugly, or beautiful, head and send us on the concentric or de-concentric circle of sadness and anxiety — that listless feeling where we don’t know whether to call the roofing guy to fix the leak he fixed yesterday, or not bother until the rain stops or not care anyway because what’s another crack in the bathroom ceiling (OK, I’ll call)?

I’ve been teaching Maus to my Holocaust Lit class, and yes, we’re all depressives — Pavel and Art and Vladek and me — but they really suffered and what have I done?

Without getting too maudlin, it’s a seasonal sadness now, living with loss. I’m trying to decide not whether but when to retire. I have loved teaching but I tend to assign such heavy literature — works I love almost more than my family and Max, such as Absalom, Absalom!, Ulysses, The Drowned and the Saved, The Catcher in the Rye, and White Teeth, just to keep this list in the finite category, but please know how many more are on it— and it’s wearing me down.

I know that retiring won’t end the sadness of my maudlin career, and could even cause greater sorrow when I realize what I’ve done, what I’ve ended.

So, no conclusions here, just words responding to Will Hull and the prompt:

“You kissed me on the forehead now this kiss is giving me a concussion, We were love at first sight, now this crush is crushing I retraced your steps through the city of romance lazily I took to the desert with your harshest words and they saved me….”

Maybe that’s it: stick to the first verse, and don’t look back at what a career it’s been…at least till it’s over.

If you haven’t responded to the prompt, I’ll urge (overkill) you now: Jessica Lee McMillan, David Acaster, Nicole Brown, If Ever You’re Listening, Steven Hale, Taylor Moran, Chris Zappa, Alex Markham, Karla Clifton, Alexander Briseño, Pierce McIntyre, TheWellSeasonedLibrarian, Kevin Alexander, Jim Mowat, and Kathryn Dillon.

Here’s another tale: