Finally! Scientific proof that happy people are evil. I knew it. This is from the NYTimes today:
Such (allowing for a little journalistic caricature) were the findings reported in last month's issue of Psychological Science. Researchers found that angry people are more likely to make negative evaluations when judging members of other social groups. That, perhaps, will not come as a great surprise. But the same seems to be true of happy people, the researchers noted. The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments -- like deciding that someone is guilty of a crime simply because he's a member of a minority group. Why? Nobody's sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ''everything is fine'' attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on stereotypes -- including malicious ones.
It goes on to say that not only are happy people judgmental bigots, they are pathologically arrogant:
As the British psychologist Richard P. Bentall has observed, "There is consistent evidence that happy people overestimate their control over environmental events (often to the point of perceiving completely random events as subject to their will), give unrealistically positive evaluations of their own achievements, believe that others share their unrealistic opinions about themselves and show a general lack of evenhandedness when comparing themselves to others." Indeed, Bentall has proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder.
Let's lock those happy people up! For the good of humanity. Hey, it's in the Times so it must be true.
On a happier note, there's a nice article in the LATimes today about the songwriting of Merle Haggard. Merle offers some interesting insights into the creative process. "Haggard estimates he has written 10,000 songs, but finds only a fraction of them worth recording." I think this is sage advice. The creative genius type does not consistently produce brilliant work, but he/she does consistently produce, and that is the key to any creative endeavor. Do lots of it. Much of it will not be good and must be discarded. Kill your babies. They are not so precious as we like to believe. This is precisely the problem with so many of the new bands I hear these days, most of which sound like cut and paste indie rock (I'm not even going to discuss the music of commercial radio). Just because someone has ten songs this doesn't mean they should record an album. Play the songs for a while, let them digest, see which ones are keepers...probably no more than two or three. And forget the rest. This is a great way to stand out from the bland band crowd.
Some other notable quotes from Haggard:
"The most important thing in a song is simplicity," Haggard tells them. "You've got to remember songs are meant to be sung. You are not writing poetry. The best songs feel like they've always been here."
"The more chords you know the more choices you have when you start to write melodies."
"...every word fits in the song. Nothing is in there just for show. That's one of the most important lessons a writer can learn. You can't fall in love with a $50 word or what you think is a clever rhyme and try to squeeze it into a song if it doesn't work."
I'd sure like to see other articles with particular artists discussing the craft of songwriting. There's something inherently fascinating in getting a glimpse of how someone works. I think it was Tom Waits who said something like "you have to break a song's bones." Of course now I'm feeling terribly inspired to go and write but I'm at work. There's a song in that: bonebreaker's blues.
