Why Must I Be Sad?

This They Might Be Giants song wasn't meant to make me cry, but it did. Twice. Here's how “Why Must I Be Sad?” became my grief anthem.

The CD face of John Henry. A literal memento mori.

I’ve been sort of dreading reaching this song since I started this newsletter. When I first began writing through John Henry, I mentioned a sudden, traumatic loss I experienced as a teenager, just four months after buying this album. Every track carries trace memories from that time, but none more than Why Must I Be Sad?

This one was always going to hurt.

I didn’t expect to cry while writing this. Again.
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The Guy Who Taught Me How to Think

Growing up, my uncle Ron taught me a lot of things. How to meditate. How to control my scary dreams. How to appreciate poetry. How to defend myself. He was my gateway into philosophy and religions like Buddhism and Taoism. The first person who taught me that life had so many layers and perspectives.

One time, I came to him for help interpreting a dream. I’d been experiencing déjà vu inside my dreams. Every night, a different scenario, but that weird feeling of “I’ve been here before” kept occurring.

If anyone had read about that phenomenon, it would’ve been him.

I soaked up his words and wisdom like Diet Coke soaked into the carpet gets sucked up by a Sham-Wow.

And then, four months after I bought John Henry, he taught me one final lesson. How to survive the suicide of someone you love.

A Soundtrack for Grief

The violence of it, sudden and inescapable, confronts your entire worldview. It takes away the person you love and hurls you into a new reality that the old you can’t live in anymore. That version of me - the who existed before this loss - did not survive. I had to become someone else in order to move forward.

And I was listening to John Henry on repeat. At first, it was my escape. Then it became my reminder as I was attaching each moment to this album with mental epoxy.

After school, I’d walk home, dragging my feet, eyes on the gravel sidewalk, carrying the heaviness of it all.

Uncle Ron had been helping us paint the house so every afternoon that week, he’d be there when I got home. I’d tell him about a comedy sketch I was working on for drama class, and he’d give me movies or music to check out.

His suggestions, his feedback, quotes - I started writing them down in a notebook so I wouldn’t forget.

And then one day, I got home. . . and he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t anywhere.

A Song That Begs for Answers

Why Must I Be Sad? is the eighth track of the album. The organ sets a mournful tone, bellowing soulfully beneath John Linnell’s voice. His vocals aren’t just carrying a melody here. They climb, tilt, and strain as if he is trying to escape the answer to his own question. The bassline in this song is also top tier. If not for the emotional imprint, I’d say it is a no-skip track without a doubt. For everyone but me.

Toward the end, John Flansburgh enters with a counterpart of half-spoken lines layered under Linnell’s final vocals. And those final vocals have a rising tension where each “why must I be sad?” climbs slightly higher than the last.

It’s like he is pleading to the universe and each question remains the same but the lever of hurt included has multiplied. It ends with one final and powerfully sustained “sad” that feels like that sadness has consumed him whole.

Wait, What’s Alice Cooper Doing Here?

It wasn’t until last week, preparing to write this very post, that I learned a truth about this song. Something that I have admit made feel embarrassed and then laugh at all my past selves. The point of view for this song is supposed to come from a kid who finds all his sadness contained and given a voice by the music of Alice Cooper.

In fact, six out of ten songs from Cooper’s album, Billion Dollar Babies, are referenced in this song. The entire counterpart that Flans is singing toward the end are just him calling out eleven different song titles from Cooper albums.

How did I miss that my entire life?

Because I don’t listen to Alice Cooper.

I know School’s Out because it was on the Scream soundtrack. I know Feed My Frankenstein from Wayne’s World. That’s it. These references missed me completely.

A Song That Said the Thing I Couldn’t

Teenage me, living through the worst thing that had ever happened to me, heard this song asking a question I was already begging an answer for.

Why is this happening to me?

Why did he do this?”

Why did this person I love want to me leave me forever?

The lyrics start out with:

“No More Mister Nice Guy”

“I Love the Dead”

I’ve been thinking about it

Now I understand what he said

Never could an opening verse have connected with me so immediately.

It goes on:

No one knows these things but me and him

So I’m writing everything down in a spiral notebook.

And there I was, walking home on a hot, sunny day, listening to this song on my Walkman, kicking gravel, squinting at the sun. Wondering if I’d ever feel happy again. And this line hit:

I kick the rocks beneath me

I squint at the sun.

Sad, sad, sad, sad

Why must I be sad?

It was like the song had started reading my mind.

A New Kind of Loss, the Same Kind of Pain

I never hear this song and not think of him. Or those days and those very hard feelings that I buried. I realize it’s a little bit on the nose to have a song about being sad make you so sad but this song does that for me. Listening to this song, brings with it, a whole lot of emotions that I can’t brush aside.

As this song approached my writing schedule, a little anxiety started to build. I didn’t want to write this post. I knew it would hurt. But I rolled up my sleeves, put the song on loop, and started anyway.

And then, two days ago, while preparing to write, I learned that my marriage was ending. The person I love most in the world would no longer be living in our apartment.

No one is angry or blaming. It’s just. . . emotionally complicated.

That’s kind of a lie. I’m wrecked.

My apartment feels haunted. Everything reminds me of us. I pick up my phone to text her something funny, and then remember, I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that anymore.

The life I had, the future I imagined; gone. That hurts in a way I don’t have language for yet.

Two Reasons to Be Sad

Eventually, I’ll learn how to be enough for me, as just me. Or however my therapist said it. This person was my best friend. We want to remain close, but it won’t ever be the same. And that breaks something open in me.

She’s the person who understood me better than anyone. Who made me laugh harder than anyone. She was just the absolute purest, loving, hilarious, and closest person I’ve ever known. It’s a heavy loss.

Maybe someday, I’ll meet someone new. I can’t imagine it. I don’t even want to. Because I don’t think I will never meet another person like her. And that’s okay. It’s okay to have been lucky enough to spend time living with a person like that. Most people don’t. Having it in my life, even though it remains in my past now, is a privilege I will cherish.

I know I can’t write anything that will change the outcome. All I can do is keep writing until I understand myself again.

In June, I wrote about the joy I experienced while sitting in a park amongst flowers thinking about how lucky I was to have this person in my life.

I was lucky. That hasn’t been erased. It exists back there, safe in the past. I feel like I’ve written myself into a hole that has become uncomfortably real and maybe a very different kind of sad.

A Repeating Chorus

Now, when I hear this song, I think of two moments in my life.
Two heartbreaks. Two losses. Two versions of me who didn’t make it through unscathed.

And it feels silly to me, maybe absurd even, that a song written as a satirical nod to teenage angst - anchored in Alice Cooper references - could become the emotional glue holding together such a life defining loss.

Twice.

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