Enough To Be On Your Way

I just listened to "Enough To Be On Your Own Way" by James Taylor. I had never heard it before and it is filled with unutterable sadness because it's about his brother who died of alcoholism on JT's birthday.

So the sun shines on this funeral, 
Just the same as on a birth
the way it shines on everything
that happens here on earth
It rolls into the Western sky
and back into the sea
and spends the day's last rays
upon this fucked-up family.

The song is up on YouTube and someone commented that they don't like his new songs because the songs are too happy and it doesn't capture his tortured soul. I was wondering then, whether the whole point of the artist is the pain, the torture. Maybe if you're happy, you can no longer write.

It's the unhappiness that beams out of your writing that people want to read, that they identify with.

And so if I clear this unhappiness from me, this heavy, heavy sadness that I have carried for so long...will my pen dry up? When my heart opens will I cap my fountain pen and put it away?

Maybe.

I'd still like to be happy though.

I'd still like to be happy.