One of the most frequent pieces of advice I’ve gotten throughout this heartbreak of mine is to bury myself in things I’d always wanted to do. To try and think past the hurt and remember what I liked to do before it all happened. Well, at the center of my person is a writer, artist, and musician. I’ve always wanted to write a song, perform it, and do something with it. So when NPR announced their annual Tiny Desk Contest, I knew I wanted to enter it with a guitarist friend of mine. I’d known that he had a chord progression he was fond of, so I wrote some lyrics over the course of a few days, hit him up on a Thursday, we had our first rehearsal on that Saturday, and did our first screen test that night. Fast forward to last night (the following Wednesday), and we put the above video together with the help of a videographer friend. You can see our submission here.
Shit, now that I read that back to myself, we created a whole-ass song in under two weeks. I wonder if that’s par for the course in the music industry? Idk. All I know right now is that art—and writing, in particular—has always brought me catharsis. This song has brought exactly that for me when I needed it most. Anyway, what I wanted to do was explain how I came up with the lyrics for the song—if for nobody else, just so that I can write it down and see it unfold in front of my own eyes. Here goes:
Happy For You
By Interstate Eighty
Lyrics by Alex Basa
Guitar by Chris Clark
Verse
Hi there, stranger! Are you broken just like me?
Have you come into this building seeking heartbreak therapy?
Did the man down in the lobby greet you using your last name?
Did he know which floor you needed and say “Elevator A”?
People only come here when the sadness is too much.
Do you wake into your nightmares? Does your life fucking suck?
I’m sorry if that sounded forward, or if it sounded rude.
I don’t know how to flirt with girls; can I try with you?
Wait! Don’t go. I know that’s why you’re here,
But like the last girl that I loved, you’ll be leaving me in tears.
Now, I’m alone. Just like every other day.
And since the doctor picked you first, I have something to say:
Unsurprisingly, the inspiration for this song actually came from a therapy session I had. In fact, the whole song takes place in the therapists’ waiting room on the 10th floor of 388 Pine Street in San Francisco. Maybe you missed it, but there’s a bit of angst hidden in the lyrics of the song. I remember walking into the building before one of my sessions, and the man behind the counter in the lobby actually recognized me, knew which floor to send me to, and told me the elevator to take. At that point, I knew that meant I had gone through enough therapy sessions that reception was able to pick me out in a crowd. I wouldn’t say I was embarrassed, per se, but it definitely did not make me feel super great. It’s a good thing I was headed into a therapy session…
The literal elevator that inspired that lyric.
Anyway, I was sitting alone in suite 1010 when this girl walked in. She flipped her therapist’s switch—which was right next to the switch I’d flipped when I came in—and sat down in a chair in the opposite corner of the room, as far away from me as the 8’x8’ box would allow. She was actually kinda cute, and my love-starved brain’s first thought was “I wonder if we’d be compatible? I should say hello.” My immediate next thought was “what the fuck is your problem, dude? She’s in a therapist’s office trying to get over something. She does not want to be flirted with right now.”
Eventually, her therapist came to the door to let her into the second area (where all the therapists’ offices are), and I was left sitting in my shame and sorrow. What a fucking dumb, pathetic, jackass thought that was—no matter how brief.
Chorus
I’m happy for you.
So damn happy for you.
Really I’m happy for you.
Sad for me, but happy for you.
Okay, fun fact: the chorus (and title of the song) sort of started out as a snide tweet I made when Justin Bieber announced his engagement to Hailey Baldwin some time ago. I joked that I was eagerly awaiting Selena Gomez’s future hit-song “Happy For You.”
Obviously, that song never came, but I really liked the idea behind a melancholy song that wrestled with the complex emotional state of being happy for someone, but sad for yourself. Little did I know that I’d be using it for myself in a little under a year, lol.
Verse
I open my phone getting sadder as I swipe.
I didn’t pay them so that means this app paid for my life.
They’re cashing in on carnal cravings: a parasitic plot.
Dating apps don’t work because I’m cute, but I’m not hot.
I still feel the ghost of the ring I used to wear:
A poignant, persistent reminder that you aren’t there.
And my entire life is something that I would have shared.
I fucking hate the fact that I will always fucking care.
No. That’s not true. It’s not something that I mean.
Any vitriolic lamentations I say are obscene.
In the future when the pain subsides I hope we reconvene,
And as your friend I hope you know this one important thing:
Chorus
I’m happy for you.
So damn happy for you.
Really, I’m happy for you.
Sad for me, but happy for you.
This verse is inspired by something that I’ve come to rue since having downloaded them at all: dating apps. I originally downloaded them to feel like I had some control over my situation, but they were only fun for all of like, 20 minutes. The ensuing days (and weeks) of using them just began to gross me out more and more as one point became all the more salient to me: I’m a kid in a candy store with the wrong kind of currency.
Even the most optimized dating apps cater to a single, primal human desire, and that’s finding an attractive mate. Nobody really gives a fuck how much you like dogs, how funny you think The Office is, or how sarcasm is “like, totally your second language.” If you’re not a 9/10 in the face+body department, you might as well be swiping right and left on paint swatches at your local hardware store. Me? Conservatively, I’m probably like a 7/10 on looks alone. Hence the lyric: “dating apps don’t work because I’m cute, but I’m not hot.”
Have you ever heard the phrase “if you’re not paying for it, then you’re the product”? A really good, sickening example is how nightclubs will charge guys a cover fee, but let girls in for free. Dating apps are a lot like that. My female friend told me about how she was getting certain “complimentary” perks from the “premium versions” of certain apps—”trial periods” of the full service the apps provided. That shit never happened for me, lol. And even if you exclude that bias, when you realize that these apps are making money by means of a superficial swiping gallery, it’s just a little bit depressing. I realized that every time I sized up a potential mate, I would read her short bio (if she had one), and I would compare that brief snippet of information to the 9 year long relationship that I’d just been forced to exit. Naturally, there can be absolutely no comparison, and every “candidate” just made me realize more and more that none of them were the person I really wanted.
Which brings me to the second stanza in the second verse—and perhaps the one that hurts me most day to day: “I still feel the ghost of the ring I used to wear: a poignant persistent reminder that you aren’t there.”
I’ve worn a “promise” ring on my left hand for the last nine years. Ask anyone who frequently makes use of a cell phone, or watch, or any sort of everyday-carry object how they feel when that object isn’t on their person. They’ll tell you that they feel “naked” without it. When you don’t feel that object, there’s a slight moment of panic as your body instinctively searches for its familiarity. Multiple times a day, I find myself feeling like something is missing from my left ring finger—because something is. And every time I do that unconscious freakout, there’s no sense of relief that follows it. All that follows is the reminder that she’s gone.
It’s frustrating beyond measure when your own body betrays you like that. I want to cut off my finger to teach it a lesson for constantly telling me what I don’t want to hear. Sometimes that frustration ratchets up to anger and resent that extends in all directions, including at the woman I love so dearly. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at reeling back those visceral emotions when they flare up. I’ve tried to approach this whole experience with love and understanding, because I do care about her and want her to be happy. I’ve supported her through undergrad, grad school, and everything few and far between. I want to support her, now. But it hurts. There’s no way I can just jump into caring about her solely platonically right now. Maybe in time. But it’s the time that kills me.
Verse
It’s not me, the one you love, and that I must accept.
But darling, over you, I’ve wept.
The songs that I love paint a portrait of what we were
And I can’t listen to them without crying, that’s for sure.
Maybe this is fine. Maybe it’s what we needed.
But I regret the day you left and that I had conceded.
There’s not a thing that I won’t do for you and that you know.
I guess that means right now, I’ve gotta let you go.
So I’ll be fine in time, don’t mind the way I write these rhymes.
Out of this hole you’ve dug for me I’m certain I will climb.
I even might forgive the piece of shit that did me wrong,
But for now, trust the words of this melancholy song:
Chorus
I’m happy for you.
So damn happy for you.
Really, I’m happy for you.
Sad for me, but happy for you.
Solo section
I feel like this section needs the least amount of context to understand well. She loves someone else. I think the angriest line in the entire song is in this verse, though: “I even might forgive the piece of shit that did me wrong.”
So, I like to refer to my performance as “the character,” here. Because I’m not as resentful as I’m portraying in the song. Yes, that was definitely a thought that I had. The person I got left for 100% flirted with, courted, and eventually crossed a bunch of physical boundaries with my then-girlfriend, knowing that she was in a committed relationship. And you can argue that it takes two to tango, but the actual situation is a bit more complicated than that. What I’m trying to get at here is that…
I don’t know. Fuck it. Maybe I am that angry. I’m allowed to be angry. But I’ve never acted on that anger in an unhealthy way. I’ve never been prohibitive or nasty towards the two of them. Maybe the nastiest thing I’ve done is write that line into the song. But you know what, I don’t owe either of them any more courtesy than I’ve already given them. I’m reclaiming my life and sanity in the only way I know how: by making art.
Wow, okay, that was a bit of a tangential rant…. Anyway, the last thing that I wanted to talk about is how we chose to end the song. Chris and I went back and forth between abruptly ending it in the middle of the chord progression (symbolizing the jarring and abrupt way my relationship ended, from my perspective), ending it on the last chord in a nice, open resolve (symbolizing the end of this chapter in my life), and ending it on the fade out—which is what we went with. We chose this way because we felt that it represented the most optimistic truth of this entire sad song: just like the chords of the song, life goes on, and so will I.
Anyway, thanks for listening. A few people have reached out and told me a bunch of really nice things about the song—the most touching for me is that people have said they were able to relate to the lyrics. They say misery needs company, and if we were able to give someone the chance to commiserate with us, then we accomplished our goal of making some great art.
In short, if the song made you feel good, then I’m happy 4 u <3
Oh, we called ourselves “Interstate Eighty” because both of us live along that interstate. That’s pretty much it.