I’ll Give You Something to Cry About!

On a day to day basis, I am a very laugh-y person. I giggle at incredibly innappropriate times, like when my large, short-tempered 3rd grade science teacher used to scream at our class to be quiet. While my fellow eight-year-olds cowered, my reaction was to muffle my laughter–surely bred out of fear–in the sleeve of my shirt. Sometimes I laugh so hard that my eyes get puffy and red, and the muscles of my face feel frozen in a perpetual, doughy smile. It’s actually a little painful.

But all that said, I also cry. A lot. Not because a road rager flipped me off or because I realize my bank account is devastatingly sparse or because I just ate about two week’s worth of calories in one sitting, and can already see it accruing on my thighs. I cry when something moves me, and I find it fulfilling to realize that I am moved by a quite a lot. Two of my favorite ways to get my cartharsis-on are by listening to heartbreakingly beautiful songs, and by reading a good novel. The list below details the who and what of both songs and books that have seriously moved me. I hope they’ll do the same for you.

Tunes:

“One More Dollar” by Gillian Welch.

Oh, Gillian. How I love you. You and your cowboy hat!!

I loved the lyrics to this song so much I wrote a story based on them. And while I wrote, I listened to this song on repeat. For literally days on end. If this particular tune doesn’t suit your fancy, try “Orphan Girl” or “No One Knows My Name.” If she doesn’t have you crying, she’ll have you tapping your bare toes and pensively sipping some moonshine.

“This is the Dream of Win and Regine” by Final Fantasy.

If you are already an Arcade Fire fan, this song may be that much lovelier (Win and Regine are married and play in their band, The Arcade Fire, as one gloriously artistic and adorable pair of musical lovebirds), but it stands its ground entirely on its own. Perhaps I am shamelessly sentimental, but this song embodies the kind of love and loneliness and sweetness and angst that I wish I could pour into my own writing.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

Say what you will about best sellers, but this book is a damn good one. Beautiful. I laughed, I cried so hard I had to put the book down until I got a grip, I laughed some more, I cried a lot more.

“Remember the Mountain Bed” by Billy Bragg and Wilco, lyrics by Woody Guthrie.

Um…I can’t talk about this one right now. I’m about to start crying.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

I’ve read this book several times and can’t decide if it’s a really twisted love story, or a story about a couple of miserable existentialists gone a little cuckoo from all those windy moors. What I do know is it is delightfully grim, and I can’t help but be moved when, psychotic or not, a guy loves his lady so much he’d dig up her dead body just to see her again.

(*giggle*/*sniff*)

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (all six of them).

I have cried at the end of every single one of these babies. I don’t know if it has something to do with Harry’s whole Burdened Hero persona, his poor murdered parents, or the fact that by the end of each book I’ve spent a straight forty-eight hours prying my eyes open with toothpicks and abstaining from food and drink in favor of finding out what’s going down at Hogwarts. These books are well-written, funny, smart, sweet, and sad. Everything a good book should be, in my opinion.

I’m a sweet-and-salty kind of person, and I like my reading and listening materials to hold that same dual quality. It’s like Joni Mitchell (whose music often makes me cry) said: Laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.

–Ashleigh