Commentary
In 1989 Linda, Steve, Lisa and I relocated from Silicon Valley to Nevada City, California. The Grass Valley Union newspaper back then had a “Meet Your New Neighbor” business column, and one of the questions I was asked was, “If you had it to do over, what would you do differently.”
“I’d laugh more while it was happening,” was the answer I came up with. That was good advice to myself then and still is. Looking back over my life so far, there really isn’t much I would change except to increase my own somewhat bewildered appreciation of how wonderfully blessed I have been.
The mood of this song was going to be goofy and raucous but, as it aged, the chords and melody changed and the song emerged calmer, subtler, more wistful.
Lemon meringue pie was my father’s favorite. Mom made them with a graham cracker crust. My brother Jon once told me about watching a man in seeming distress leave a Quaker Meeting early, only to return later evidently content. Jon asked about this transformation, and the man told him he had driven to a restaurant and had a slice of blueberry pie.
The Serenity Prayer, why in practice is it so complicated?
Laugh More is about how we experience time, and it used to have a verse as follows:
The past and future can’t exist except within the now.
The living moment must be larger than those two somehow.
To receive the present fully—here, now, more and more—
Stretches way beyond limit what we imagined was in store.
I like this omitted verse. Ram Dass said, “Be here, now.” Meher Baba said, “Live more and more in the present, which is ever beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and future.”
And back in 1967 a young Harvard psychology professor, Tom Cottle, told me about his study of how people in different cultures experience time, describing an exercise where subjects are given pencil and paper and asked to draw three circles representing the past, present and future. “But don’t people put you on”, I said, with my arm drawing a large circle in the air and, within it, a sideways yin-yang morphing into a figure eight/infinity symbol touching the large circle’s left and right sides. “Very nice,” he said, causing me to think about this ever since: “I assume that would be the past flowing into the future at the center of the present.”
Yes, the living “present,” when received consciously and consistent with whom one best has been and will be, feels large, whole and full. I cut the verse, however, because, to succeed, a short song can have but one emotional message; here, my own greater need: to experience time not philosophically but with humor. “Laugh More” is about welcoming the cosmic joke with laughter. I hope you enjoy it!
Listen
Lyrics
Since I died an age ago I've had time to think.
Down here time flows very slow, my lifetime was a blink.
If I had it to do over with the knowledge I have now
I'd be laughing as it happened, as my life came back around.
Chorus:
Laugh more. Laugh more. Savor every minute.
Laugh more. Laugh more. “Get the joke” while you're innit.
Living was a struggle while I stuck to my old story.
The past was grim, my future dim, I didn't know the glory
Of living in the moment and laughing as I went . . .
It's funny when I look back on the sorry life I spent.
Chorus:
Laugh more. Laugh more. Savor every minute.
Laugh more. Laugh more. “Get the joke” while you're innit.
When life brings you lemons as sometimes it must
Try a meringue topping and a graham cracker crust.
And when you’re feeling kind of blue & yr heart won't tell you why,
Let you feelings be, but why don’t we share blue berry pie?
<instrumental chorus>
What you can't change is other folk, what you might change is you.
So pray for wisdom, learn to know the difference between the two.
Other folks you just can't change—I was trying when I died,
But when I laugh at myself things re-arrange inside.
Chorus:
Laugh more. Laugh more. Savor every minute.
Laugh more. Laugh more. “Get the joke” while you're innit.