I’ve just lost ten years of my life in a computer crash, and it’s got me down. I’ve tried being grown-up and rational about it, reminding myself that it’s not the end of the world: I could have cancer, or someone I love could have died, and anyway it’s my own stupid fault for not backing things up. But I just end up feeling worse, moping away the days in grief, guilt, and frustration.
Stephen King, of all people, reminded me what I need. In a recent Entertainment Weekly column (Aug 10, 2007, available at ew.com), he describes a YouTube video in which an ordinary middle-aged guy, hearing a few bars of a favorite old song, breaks into a solitary dance in the aisle of Best Buy. This is what the arts are for, King says, “to cause a sudden burst of happy emotion, a sudden rush to the head, the feet, and what may be the truest home of joy: a butt that just has to shake its happy self.”
King’s list of his personal “joy buzzers” inspired me to come up with my own favorites, which range from pop art to classics. I figure it’s as good a way as any to introduce myself to anyone who might happen upon this site. Herewith, in no particular order:
· The twitch of Hugh Grant’s hip to the beat of “Jump” by the Pointer Sisters in “Love, Actually.” This one’s a triple whammy: I get to watch Grant’s Prime Minister have his own buzz of joy; I get to watch Grant unwind; and I get to twitch to a song that’s one of my own buzzers.
· The end of “Grand Canyon,” where the characters, having bridged a few chasms of their own, stand silently gazing out at the canyon. If I made movies, this would be the one I would make, about fear and hope and remembering what’s important. (For its literary equivalent, see Ian McEwan’s Saturday.)
· The entire U2 “Joshua Tree” album. And, less moving but more energizing, singing the OOH-ooh’s in “Elevation” with Bono.
· Hearing “Bridge over Troubled Waters,” especially at a concert where my seat was right over the stage and Simon and Gar, now geezers but no less magical, sang literally at my feet and I still got choked up even though I’ve heard it at least a million times.
· The stunning first paragraph of Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, which I read on a plane. Several pages later, I closed my eyes and knew that if the plane crashed, I would die in a moment of pure bliss.
· The Amen of the Gloria in Mozart’s “Coronation Mass.”
· Kenneth Branagh giving the St. Crispin’s day speech in “Henry V.” The words (“we few, we happy few, we band of brothers”), the voice, the music, the camera work: absolute chills no matter how many times I replay it.
· Emma Thompson’s one-minute meltdown in “Love, Actually” when she thinks her husband has been unfaithful—OK, definitely amazing but maybe not exactly a joy buzzer, so how about Laura Linney’s hidden dance of joy when she gets the guy she loves home? and Bill Nighy’s twitchy, over-the-hill rocker exhibiting his entire scrawny body on prime time? and the two porn star stand-ins sharing an innocent kiss as the snow falls on Christmas Eve? I guess I’m going to have to conclude that the entire movie is a gigantic joy buzzer.
· Singing along with Neil Diamond, in spite of his often-laughable lyrics, or with Barbra Streisand or the sound track to “Les Miserables.”
· Any and every word spoken by Andre Braugher in “Homicide,” though the joy of witnessing godlike acting is tempered by the always-depressing truths being uttered through gritted teeth.
· “Love Changes Everything,” one of those ever-crescendoing Broadway songs full of lines like “Now I tremble at your name.” Sigh.
· The last scene of “You’ve Got Mail,” when Tom Hanks comes into the park, and their eyes meet, and Meg Ryan says “I really wanted it to be you.”
· And when, in “Sleepless in Seattle,” Tom Hanks’s sister has a meltdown recounting the plot of “An Affair to Remember,” and the guys respond with a mocking rendition of the end of “The Dirty Dozen,” and it could become a nasty Mars-and-Venus moment, but instead everybody laughs, and it’s just so funny, and so real.
· “Lux Aeterna” by Lauridsen. Real art, more of a soother than a joy buzzer. As beautiful and comforting as a hot bath, it’s what I reach for when I can’t sleep.
· Making a list of my favorite things, and not being depressed any more.
Note: If you want some fun, post your own list as a comment. And please add your approximate age or generation with your list.
