What Does The Cornish One Think?

We've got a new recruit! The Happiness Index continues but our ranks have been swelled by Cornwall's own Holly Kavanagh. She's in our new improv video (posted below), but she's also decided to brave the blog. Here she is on loneliness, happiness, selflessness and Akon.

In the words of Tomcraft's 2003 hit Loneliness: 

Happiness seems to be loneliness

 and loneliness chilled my world

To me that seems to make not much sense at all. "What Holly? That’s a bold thing to state". That may be, but is he saying that being happy comes from being lonely? Loneliness might suggest nobody to talk to or no one to visit or play with. 


The essence of loneliness is clearly portrayed in Akon's 2005 hit 'Lonely'. Akon's song lightens the sombre feelings of the protagonist by emulating the voices of the great artistes Alvin and the Chipmunks, but even in their chipper voices, he doesn’t sound too happy.

Lonely

 I'm so lonely

 I have no-body 

 To call my own

In fact, I would say that he sounds quite sad.

So, back to Tomcraft; although a catchy tune, I don’t think happiness seems to be loneliness. "That’s presumptuous of you."  Well,  it's an idea I may explore later on but I have other ground-breaking Broken Ground things to be doing in the next few days. 

This week I am pursuing some tasks that may lead to my own happiness. To do this I am doing tasks that do not promote loneliness, but interaction with others. For internal happiness we need external influence.

We have five (What? Five?) Yep, five, and here they are:

Give someone a hug
Let someone in front of you in a queue
Give someone a gift
Give to a charity shop
Pick up litter as you're walking

The first three tasks are a collective decision between us all, and we individually chose two more that appealed to us. My choices are to pick up litter that I see as I'm walking. I liked the phrasing of this and the idea of not stopping walking, so I am going to make several attempts of picking up litter without stopping, like a gannet swooping up a fish from the river, or my mum hoovering the displaced gravel on the garden patio with her trusty Dyson and giving no time to stop and think about what just happened. The second is to give to a charity shop, something I have never done before so lets see how that goes.

From the list of things we're doing (which we stole from the Internet), every task seemed to be directed externally, not internally.

According to Wikipedia, Akon grossed $21 million in 2010. Does that make you happy, Akon? Does it make you as happy as picking up litter as you're walking? Like a gannet on a river scooping up fish in its beak? Food for thought maybe, hmmmmmm?

First task is litter picking, I’m off to Leeds so will make this part of my journey. Hope it doesn’t end up being a greasy Burger King wrapper.


So, happiness isn't loneliness, even though it seemed to be to Tomcraft (and Samuel Beckett, though we won't go into that here). The moral of the story seems to be 'never trust a  turn-of-the-century German Techno DJ', more on this later no doubt.


As promised, here are some choice cuts from our latest filmed improvisation session:

See you next time for more of this kind of thing. Keep Happy.