Melancholia

Through the bends, between the bars

When Emma came into my life in 2004, and more specifically, into my Brooklyn apartment, she quickly learned that I didn’t understand how relationships worked. Even before that, though, after only a week of sharing such a small space, she wondered aloud what we would do about “the music.” 

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Almost every single song you listen to is depressing,” she said. 

Elliott Smith, Beck’s Sea Change, Nick Drake, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, The Smiths, Bowie’s Heathen. All in heavy rotation.

“It feels like the same song, over and over,” she said. “And it’s bringing me down.”

This felt similar to when, earlier that year, a creative director flipped through my design portfolio and said, “You sure do like blue, huh?” I hadn’t seen it until that moment. So much blue. How exposed I felt.

I wanted to defend myself in both cases, to say, Show me a better color than blue, which, like the sky, contains everything.

Wanting Emma to be happy, though, I asked her what she’d rather listen to. My brain went all staticky when she started answering. Somewhere in there I heard a sound that was something like “Clapton,” and another sound like “Dave Matthews Band.”

“Maybe I can wear headphones?” I suggested.  “Or maybe we both could?”

“Forever?” she asked. At least she was thinking long-term. We could make this work.

We settled into a happy common ground with The Beatles, Prince, David Bowie—more Heroes than Heathen. She sometimes let me get away with Radiohead for a song or two, until—

“It’s just relentlessly bleak,” she said. “Why does he always sound so sad?”

“Because he’s a genius,” I said.

“Doesn’t it make you sad, listening to all this?”

“A little. But in a good way.”

“What’s there to be so sad about?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I was happy to have her here, right in front of me. I then thought of my relationship failure rate thus far, which was a clean 100%. The combination of feeling madly in love and doomed to failure is actually the perfect time to listen to Elliott Smith.

I grabbed my headphones and went for a run. 

When our daughter Evie was born in 2008, I began immediately with The Beatles. We sang jaunty duets, accompanied by my ukulele, her early favorite being the one she called “Lellow Suffarine.”

She became fixated, even as a toddler, on John Lennon. She sang the haunting verses of “A Day in the Life,” and asked endless questions about him. I felt a surge of pride, with a small side of concern. Would it be better for our tiny girl, I wondered, if she was a bit more like her mom, more inclined toward McCartney’s sunshine?

It wasn’t until Covid, though, in Evie’s teen years, that I noticed a marked shift in her playlists toward the truly melancholy. Stuck in her room, watching her last year of middle school through a screen, she discovered The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Mazzy Star. Yes, I thought. And also: Oh no.

What a barrage of sorrowful things around us then: the pandemic, losing both of my parents (her Nana and Papa), Evie’s best friend in the world moving far upstate, our best family friends relocating across the country. It felt relentless. 

In times like these, what’s more satisfying than dabbing the brush into the bluer end of the palette? What’s more comforting than the perfect moody song, sung by someone who’s also feeling a bit lost, lonely, and down? 

Evie and I spent many long drives together, in our car cocoon with snow swirling against the windshield, taking turns serving up two songs each, her then me. Just listen to this, we’d say. Oh, and this one. My god, this one.

She introduced me to some newer melancholy artists like Mitski and Cigarettes After Sex.

“Can we play The Bends, start to finish?” Evie asked me on one drive. She rolled the volume up to gloriously way-too-loud as the hypnotic drums and shimmering guitars kicked us into “Planet Telex.” We listened together, driving toward the sinking winter sun, and I was positively brimming with happy-sad.

 Everything is… broken. Everyone is…  broken.

—Radiohead, “Planet Telex”

I’m standing near our piano, waiting. Evie spends hours each day here, playing Debussy and Chopin. But now she wants to play me one of her own songs, the latest.

Her shoulders rise and fall with a full breath, and she starts in. It’s in 3/4. I hear influences of Elliott Smith and Bon Iver, but more than anything, I hear her. I’m awash in a confusing mix of feelings, listening to her play and sing. It’s so beautiful. But also, heartbreaking. The dad in me thinks: Please, please don’t let my sweet girl be so sad. 

“Well?” Evie asks me afterward.

I am choked. “It’s absolutely gorgeous,” I manage to say. “I love it so much.” 

“You know I don’t feel like that all the time, obviously,” she says. She plays a dark little chromatic bass run.

“Obviously,” I agree, failing to sound as breezy as I’d hoped. 

She laughs. “It’s just a song, Daddy.”

It’s just a song. And so much more than a song.

Everything can be so beautiful. And heartbreaking. And often hilarious. And more often, something indescribable that silences me completely. They all feel like facets of the same jewel, that I can hold and turn in the light, admiring different aspects. 

What is this life? How am I lucky enough to know these humans? And how short our time is together. It’s almost unbearable. And yet, here we are.

Emma steps into the room to listen, standing next to me now.

I say to Evie, “Will you play that one again, my love? Your mom will love it.” Evie shrugs and turns back to the piano. 

Of course I no longer believe that all love is doomed, or that everything’s broken, but those are still my favorite kinds of songs. Transforming all that blue into something beautiful is perhaps the most hopeful thing a person can do.

Evie sways a little, playing the intro to her melancholy waltz. My eyes fill with happy tears when, over a minor chord, she starts to sing.