((big american party))
The Austin Chronicles
November Twenty Fourth
The first couple of days we've been down here it's been totally shit weather all day. Just a constant downpour of gigantic rain drops against a grey sky. And it has not escaped my notice that i've felt real tired all the time. Yesterday it really was coming down all day, even when i woke up. And i remember waking up and immediately feeling exhausted. I sort of wanted to go right back to sleep, even though it was ten o'clock when i woke up.
But today was a polar opposite. It was beautiful. Blue skies without a single cloud to be found, sunny but still kind of cool, like a good Michigan autumn day. And i felt good. Really fucking good, man. I didn't feel tired at all and i was super comfortable all day and i laughed more and i talked more than probably the last two days put together. This is the first time i've noticed, i think, what extent the weather has on my mood. I really did feel kind of bummed out the past couple of days. I thought about things i shouldn't and really let them get to me. But today was so different. I regained a sense of levity that was missing. It's so strange that something as arbitrary as our air fronts can affect me as much as it does.
I've been talking a little to you guys back in Michigan and it seems like the general consensus is that things are kind of morbid back there. And i thought about it a little; about what other things can make a group of people (i.e. us) as melancholy as i know we get on occasion. It can't just be the weather; there's much uglier weather than the HMC's atmosphere. Of course the music came to mind again ("What came first- the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?") but i've been over that theory a hundred times and i'm pretty sure you can listen to The Smiths and still be happy.
And then i had this thought (and this is purely hypothetical, of course, i don't mean to suggest anything): what if we're bummed out because the rest of us are bummed out? We're all so close to each other, and even the people we're not close with are totally intertwined within us through connections with other people. We are a niche of about twenty or so people (who's counting?) that rely on each other and lean on each other and transcend each other. If one of us is depressed, it won't be long before someone else is, and if that someone else is, the next one is likely to be as well... and it keeps spreading like that until we are all feeling a similar thing.
It's great that we can be as close to each other as we are, of course, but if this theory is true, if emotions do spread amongst us, is there any hope for us? A group this large (even though, if you think about it, isn't that large) can never have everyone happy at the same time. It simply doesn't work like that. Teenagers and twenty-somethings are going to experience darkness, that's a natural occurrence that is inevitable to emotional growth, no matter what a Zoloft commercial will lead you to believe. But if someone is always going to be unhappy sometime, does that mean we'll all be unhappy most of the time?
I don't have a solution. It's just a thought; a stab in the psychological dark. But it's interesting to think about, i think. I wonder if someone has already done some work on this hypothesis. It seems more than reasonable; i should research this a bit.
November Twenty Fourth
The first couple of days we've been down here it's been totally shit weather all day. Just a constant downpour of gigantic rain drops against a grey sky. And it has not escaped my notice that i've felt real tired all the time. Yesterday it really was coming down all day, even when i woke up. And i remember waking up and immediately feeling exhausted. I sort of wanted to go right back to sleep, even though it was ten o'clock when i woke up.
But today was a polar opposite. It was beautiful. Blue skies without a single cloud to be found, sunny but still kind of cool, like a good Michigan autumn day. And i felt good. Really fucking good, man. I didn't feel tired at all and i was super comfortable all day and i laughed more and i talked more than probably the last two days put together. This is the first time i've noticed, i think, what extent the weather has on my mood. I really did feel kind of bummed out the past couple of days. I thought about things i shouldn't and really let them get to me. But today was so different. I regained a sense of levity that was missing. It's so strange that something as arbitrary as our air fronts can affect me as much as it does.
I've been talking a little to you guys back in Michigan and it seems like the general consensus is that things are kind of morbid back there. And i thought about it a little; about what other things can make a group of people (i.e. us) as melancholy as i know we get on occasion. It can't just be the weather; there's much uglier weather than the HMC's atmosphere. Of course the music came to mind again ("What came first- the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?") but i've been over that theory a hundred times and i'm pretty sure you can listen to The Smiths and still be happy.
And then i had this thought (and this is purely hypothetical, of course, i don't mean to suggest anything): what if we're bummed out because the rest of us are bummed out? We're all so close to each other, and even the people we're not close with are totally intertwined within us through connections with other people. We are a niche of about twenty or so people (who's counting?) that rely on each other and lean on each other and transcend each other. If one of us is depressed, it won't be long before someone else is, and if that someone else is, the next one is likely to be as well... and it keeps spreading like that until we are all feeling a similar thing.
It's great that we can be as close to each other as we are, of course, but if this theory is true, if emotions do spread amongst us, is there any hope for us? A group this large (even though, if you think about it, isn't that large) can never have everyone happy at the same time. It simply doesn't work like that. Teenagers and twenty-somethings are going to experience darkness, that's a natural occurrence that is inevitable to emotional growth, no matter what a Zoloft commercial will lead you to believe. But if someone is always going to be unhappy sometime, does that mean we'll all be unhappy most of the time?
I don't have a solution. It's just a thought; a stab in the psychological dark. But it's interesting to think about, i think. I wonder if someone has already done some work on this hypothesis. It seems more than reasonable; i should research this a bit.