http://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/...ow-when-to-embrace-it
>> "Part of this book started with this love that I have of sad music," says Cain. She asked herself: why we don't feel worse when we listen to sad music? Instead, we often feel uplifted and connected to the artist and other listeners who are also trying to tap into the emotions of the songs.

In a conversation with Life Kit, Cain argues that those of us who love sad music have what she calls the "bittersweet condition." It's a state she describes as the recognition of life's impermanence, a kind of acknowledgement that everyone and everything we hold dear will not be here forever. And with that melancholic recognition comes greater, not less, contentment, says Cain. So, embracing your melancholy could make you happier in the long run.<<

I used to have a text list of the saddest songs with a friend and we would laugh that somehow sadness jump started the creativity. And those songs, though sad, didn't make me sad or depressed. Some of them are anchored forever to the time I heard them and played them so often I thought they became mine. My mind seems to use songs as landmarks in my life and it seems that their sadness, or melancholy was far more interesting than the happy songs. I always intuited this and knew it without thinking but this article really drew it out well.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.