The Sad Happies

In an old interview with Cameron Crowe, the god of the movie soundtrack, he said that his favorite music moment from his film catalogue was the ending scene of Say Anything, when John Cusack AKA Lloyd is packing up his room to The Replacements’ Within Reach. 

That scene gives you that perfect conflicted feeling that’s so human and real: incredibly sad yet strangely happy. “That’s my favorite way to feel,” says Crowe.

It's raining and the smell of things outside hasn't quite ticked over from winter (dead stuff, storms up north) into spring (living stuff, deep damp warmth). My dad texted me some old photos from when my sister and I were just little pinecone sprouts back in Colorado. When I look at these photos, I’m filled with so much heliated joy and terrible heartache. It’s Cameron’s sad happies, all over again.

Do you get the sad happies when faced with memories of yourself from late-young childhood? I do. Maybe ’cause, having been one, I know that young girls are full of dark mysteries. And because like any good omniscient narrator I know what the future holds for my sister and me: As Nick Cave puts it, all the “small, yet cataclysmic devastations of life.” And because my dad is younger than I am now in that one pic, dungarees wearing and side-burns-farming, and I’ll never get to hang out and have beers with that cool dude as he was then. 

It’s all so damn wistful and the hardest thing to describe. The best sensations are like that — elusive and full of conflict. Like when you love people unbearably. Like when you can’t stay but it hurts to leave.

In my experience, whether it be memories or the feelings they bring — the heart is rarely afforded any relief. But you have your own 3X5s from way back when … so you already know what I mean.