The Day I Cried on Social Media 💧
Well, it’s happened. Not sure it was inevitable but here we are …
I’ve gone viral.
Okay, not exactly me, but a silly Instagram reel I stitched has sort of exploded. And it was … bananas. My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing.
What’s even more bananas is that the reel is just a bunch of people crying over a bittersweet music video. Apparently, that’s a hot topic, and not everyone is impressed.
Mainly, people are asking why TF are we crying over a sad music video and why are we doing this on social media? Are we doing this for attention?
(These are, in my opinion, excellent questions.)
PC: Darius Bashar
Honestly, I love crying. It feels just too damn good not to do it. I love anything melancholy, sad, heart-wrenching, and nearly shattering. And it turns out, I’m not alone.
Susan Cain talks about this in her amazing book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. In it, she opens with a famous motif: a cellist of Sarajevo, Vedran Smailović, playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor, while paying homage at the scene of the bombing of 22 civilian Sarajevans as they lined up for bread.
He played this sorrowful minor chord piece as in the distance, “the rifles fire, the shelling booms, the machine guns crackle.” He continued to play throughout the siege of Sarajevo.
Again and again and again, Cain was drawn to this piece and to this single cellist as he played, creating a moment that became so powerful, so galvanizing, that it has been translated into literature and film.
Why are sadness, sorrow, and crying so fundamental? I, like Cain, used to shy away from my propensity towards sadness, thinking I was weak and silly. But it turns out, I’m not.
Crying is a powerful behavioral tool we have, as humans, that helps connect us, form bonds, and foster empathy and emotional stability. My own book, The Monster and the Mirror, is the product of my journey through pain, trauma, sadness, and of course, how fantasy helped me with that.
It seems Cain and I aren’t alone — the reel now has about 6 million views and over 200k “likes”. You can’t really argue with those numbers.
So on that note, here are a few pieces of music that have helped me tap into my melancholy self so I can write the best way I know how — with sadness.
Marin Marais, Improvisation sur les folies d’Espagne (Spotify)
Schwanengesang, D. 957: No. 4 in D Minor, Ständuchen (Spotify)
The Beginning of the End, Movement VII, ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’, The Newton Brothers (Spotify)
Pan’s Labyrinth Lullaby, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, Javier Navarrete (Spotify)
Theme From Schindler’s List, John WIlliams, Itzhak Perlman, Boston Symphony Orchestra (Spotify)
Chevaliers De Sangreal, “The Da Vinci Code”, Hans Zimmer (Spotify)