Happy, a Song

that will make you happy

Here’s that song I mentioned a while back.¹ It deserves a spot by itself. (Sound file and video at the bottom.)

My son Jonah and his friend Sam Hagen formed a band in 2012 called Hold Your Breath. This is a song they recorded at the time. Jonah wrote it. Sam on rhythm guitar. It’s such a beautiful, simple thing, but also written with humor and easy wit. It speaks of youth and carefree pleasure and nervous first love and that moment when a kid teeters between being a child and a teenager. It is so simple and relaxed you hardly notice the cunning of the structure and the beauty of the lyrics. I especially appreciate that he managed to get in the phrase “regurgitated worms” and make it fit the line. It is so pleasing when I writer takes a wild chance on a word like that. Little touches make a work non-ordinary.

The first verse/refrain consists of just five words. Such precision and restraint. Actually, I suppose it’s not exactly a refrain since it only occurs once right at the beginning. But something like…

I am so happy.
I am so happy today.
I am so happy.
I am so happy today.
I am so happy
Today is the day.

There are three body verses, each a little scene, a complete scene, a story even, with a simple rising emotional arc from one to the other (I keep using the word “simple” because I continue to marvel at the precision and cleanliness of the conception, the lines of writing). First, a nest of baby “birdlets,” second, a high school dance in the clouds, third, a fantastic teenage gettogether, the continents (my goodness) hanging out at North America’s place, ending with that vision of all difference dissolving into that vast, singular, mega-continent, Pangea, which in the context becomes a symbol of youth, affection, love, and fun. In effect, in each verse the image-symbols get larger and LARGER until they compass the entire WORLD.

Each verse ends with a turn back to the refrain —

I am so happy
Today is the day.

As you listen, take note of the emotional panel. Again, the technique is simple, never exaggerates, but precise. First, the wild joy of the birdlets because tonight “they will not starve.” Then the “nervous” cloud asking another cloud to the high school dance. (All Jonah has to do is mention “nervous” and the act of asking a person to go out, and the dance “in the school cafeteria” and the emotion is there.) And, finally, the lovely, youthful exuberance, the charge that comes when Australia decides to join South America and North America. As you listen (says he, wanting for words), feel the emotional shifts, the rising joy.

Between the high school dance and the teenage continents hanging out there is a verse of scat singing, a rhythmic fill-in meant to delay the ending.

And then at the end, a final verse, an ending — “So let’s be happy…” Once again, the emotion is not just named but presented — “these bright summer days / are great for ice cream…”

This sound file is the recorded version.

This video is a September, 2012 performance.

1. “Why am I so cheerful? I woke up with a song my son Jonah wrote running through my head. It’s called Happy.”

Happy