Keys and Pennies Covered With Tobacco

Neil, many years ago, played an album by Megan Mullally (Karen from Will & Grace) for me. It’s surprisingly good, and when I saw it on Apple Music this morning I got excited and played one of its songs for Michael.

It happens to be one of the saddest songs I know.

I remain struck by a few things:

1. her nuanced delivery and lovely voice. At the time, I didn’t even know she sang much less had an album. And her character, although hilarious, had become so much of a caricature that I’d lost interest in the show and stopped watching. And I never bothered with her short lived talk show. But I would listen to her sing without hesitation.

2. this song itself. How such a short scene - really just a moment in time, a spotlight on a moment - can tell an entire story, and

3. how that moment, made up of a few notes and words, can so richly and vividly encapsulate and express so much: the suddenness of the grief experience and its many emotions-even the ones we try to numb and dull, memories and visions we’ve had and hold, and the moving on process.

For such a short little song, it packs one hell of a wallop. It’s called “Lament”.

Michael doesn’t understand why I like sad songs and music. He has a hard time getting why I choose to experience those emotions out of all the emotions that music can create.

I’ve always said that I like music that makes you feel something-that provokes an emotion. Joy, fear, anger, sorrow, delight, despair…I’ve never really explored why I’ve always said that, though.

I guess what I like most about a song is that it is sad, and sometimes there’s beauty in sadness and being sad. The beauty lies in the shared experience, the commonality of an emotion that unites humanity, one with an inherent essence of empathy and understanding. And I guess, I think, that’s why I’m drawn to what other people would call sad or depressing music.

Like this song, which made me cry by its end once more this morning, just like it did the first time Neil played it for me.

Lament

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I’ll make you little jackets; I’ll make you little trousers From his old pants.

They’ll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with.

Life must go on, And the dead be forgotten; Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.