CONTENTMENT

CONTENTMENT

 

Without sounding preachy, very often in life it is easy to plan big. The big holiday, the big party…the big anything really. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to remember a particular event in life with a big gesture. However sometimes it’s possible to have the same epic memories doing something small.

 

So when you get the chance to take a few sneaky days off or you take an unexpected break from work or studying it doesn’t always have to be a well planned epic event, there’s always an inherent beauty in wandering around your local town or area just taking in the new sights and sounds or, certainly in this weather, sitting in a park just taking in the silence, something which Otis Redding espoused with such relaxed clarity in ‘(Sittin on) The Dock of A Bay’. In this little number by making the ‘dock of a bay’ slightly anonymous, yes it may be ‘frisco, Otis Redding allows the listener to transplant the sentiment to any particular moment of doing nothing to anywhere and any place. Equally when he talks of ‘resting his bones’ and ‘roaming 2000 miles’ he captures that tiredness that always seems to hit you when you take that unexpected break. There’s something that just sort of makes this the title track of any sneaky day off.

 

 

Having said that about Otis Redding sometimes a sneaky day off is a time to reflect and nothing shows reflection better than the Kinks ‘Sunny Afternoon’. The song itself was written at a time of the progressive tax policies instigated by the Labour Government of Harold Wilson. It had similar sentiments such as The Beatles ‘Taxman’ in its slightly dour outlook on life but it captures that feeling of torpor a person gets when they have a sunny afternoon and they realise ‘the tax man has taken all their dough’. After all there’s one thing no one can take and that ‘the sunny afternoon’.

 

 

There does come a point when you’re having that day off or sneaky break when a partner in crime may join you, arguably they should always join you, and doing nothing together becomes far more fun and for that one moment in time you become part of a magical ‘nothing moment’. A moment captured so beautifully by Weezer in ‘Island In the Sun’ and there’s nothing wrong with listening to their advice of ‘running away together’. The band very cleverly make you feel that doing nothing can lead to something great and sometimes it doesn’t more often it just leads to the peace that the song brings with its childlike video and sunny backdrop. It’s a modern day version of the Otis Redding Sittin on the Dock of a Bay, as the ‘Island in the Sun’ could be anywhere you want it to be.

So there it is, contentment doesn’t always have to be ‘epic’ it just has to be beautiful and often beautiful can be small and simple.