What Is Sadness, and What Is Depression?
The New York Times
By Jennifer Finney Boylan
June 13, 2018
I stood onstage as an audience of over a thousand people applauded and cheered. My hosts placed an award in my hands. I nodded to the crowd, and they all rose to their feet. Hooray for you, the strangers shouted. Hooray!
Less than a week later, I sat up in bed in my house in Maine. A voice said: “You’re nothing. You’re a joke. They’d never have given you that award if they knew the truth.”
It was hard to argue. After all, who knew me better than the voice inside my head?
As it turns out, the person who knows me better than that voice is me. This is what depression does: It lies to you. At this point in my life, I’m stronger than it is. But if I were younger — or if the voice were louder — things might be different.
I don’t know what drove Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain to suicide, and all I can wish for their families is love and solace. And we are all still struggling to understand the rapid growth in the national suicide rate — which, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has nearly doubled for women since 2000.
But I do know that we don’t have a good language for talking about sadness or depression, which are two countries that have a common border.
Depression can be a kind of blindness that blacks out everything but the worst. An artist — or anyone — who is suffering from that blindness isn’t someone who is seeing a reality the rest of us cannot face. Most of the time, that person is just an innocent soul who has been seduced by a voice that is separating her from the truth.
Sadness, on the other hand, is a natural and reasonable reaction to the miseries of the world, some of them personal, some universal. There’s nothing unhealthy about sadness, and if certain things about the world at present fail to make you miserable, then you’re simply not paying attention. It’s not a state I aspire to. But as Paul Simon once sang, “Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.”
The problem is that it can be hard to tell the two apart.
When I was 8, I accidentally crashed through a glass door on my way to something called Aquarama in Philadelphia. That landed me in the emergency room at the Bryn Mawr Hospital, where I got 10 stitches and a bandage.
Fourteen years later, I was sitting on the stoop of a house in Middletown, Conn., with a girl whom I was just about to kiss. She saw the scar on my arm. “Oh, no,” she said. “You too?”
She pulled back her sleeve to show the place on her arm where she had a scar as well. She hadn’t gotten hers en route to Aquarama.
Six years after that I found myself alone at the edge of a cliff in Nova Scotia. A voice whispered: “Go ahead, jump. Who would miss you?”
Fortunately, I was pulled back at that moment, although even now I cannot say by what exactly. But something reached out and held me.
Sadness and depression, and love, are at the heart of “Long Players,” a new book by Peter Coviello, a memoir about the dark hole he fell into after his marriage dissolved and the way music — and the love of his now ex-stepdaughters — helped to save him.
One morning, in the depth of his depression, he went down to the kitchen and stared at a knife.
Mr. Coviello — whom I knew years ago when he was a professor at Bowdoin — emerges from his cave battered but alive. In part, it’s his exuberant love of song that resuscitates him, although it’s also the thing that can instantly transport him back in time to the days of his happiness, shattering him anew.
In response to his work, I wanted to make him a playlist of my own, tracing the movement in the book from its early joy through its darkness, and finally emerging on the other side. I thought of starting off with Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell.” Then: “Oh No,” by the Mothers of Invention; then “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber; Schumann’s “Träumerei”; and Bob Dylan’s “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” I might finish up with “The Man Who Sold the World,” by David Bowie; “Midnight Train,” by Dave Rawlings; and “Better Things,” by the Kinks.
Music’s a good way out of the darkness. But it isn’t the only way. Sometimes, for me, baking bread helps. So does getting out and running or riding my bike. So does the love of friends.
Therapy’s good, too.
After that girl touched the scar on my arm, she kissed me and said, “I’m so sorry.”
I kissed her back. I didn’t know anything about the future. “It was a long time ago,” I told her. “I’m better now.”
词汇：
1. applaud
1）表示“鼓掌”，英文解释为“When a group of people applaud, they clap their hands in order to show approval, for example, when they have enjoyed a play or concert.”举个🌰：
The audience laughed and applauded.
观众欢笑并且鼓掌。
2）表示“称赞”，英文解释为“When an attitude or action is applauded, people praise it.”举个🌰：
He should be applauded for his courage.
他应该因其勇气而受到称赞。
2. rise to one's feet
表示“站起来”，英文解释为“to stand up after you have been sitting ”举个🌰：
He rose to his feet when she walked in.
当她走进来时，他站了起来。
3. hooray
hooray /huːˈreɪ/ 等同于hurray，对某事表示高兴或兴奋的叫喊声“好啊”，英文解释为“used to express excitement, pleasure, or approval”，举个🌰：
You won? Hurray! 你赢了？好啊！
4. solace
表示“安慰，抚慰，慰藉”，英文解释为“help and comfort when you are feeling sad or worried”举个🌰：
When his friend left him, he found solace in the bottle (= drank alcohol).
朋友离开他之后，他借酒消愁。
5. black sth. out
表示“遮盖；遮挡”，英文解释为“to cover a face or a name so that it cannot be seen”举个🌰：
In the TV interview, they blacked out the victim's face.
在电视采访中，他们遮挡住了受害人的脸部。
6. seduce
表示“引诱，诱惑”，英文解释为“to persuade or cause someone to do something that they would not usually consider doing by being very attractive and difficult to refuse”举个🌰：
I wouldn't normally stay in a hotel like this, but I was seduced by the fabulous location.
我一般不会住在这样的旅馆，但还是被其地点所诱。
7. aspire
表示“渴望（成就）；有志（成为）”，英文解释为“to have a strong desire to achieve or to become sth”举个🌰：
She aspired to a scientific career.
她有志于科学事业。
8. substitute
1）作名词，表示“代替者；代替物；代用品”，英文解释为“a person or thing that you use or have instead of the one you normally use or have”，如：a meat substitute 肉食替代品。
2）作动词，表示“用…代替，代之以”，英文解释为“to use something or someone instead of another thing or person”举个🌰：
You can substitute oil for butter in this recipe.
这道菜中你可以用食用油代替黄油。
8.tell sth./sb. apart
表示“分辨，区分”，英文解释为“to be able to see the difference between two very similar things or people”举个🌰：
As babies, the twins looked so much alike that I just couldn't tell them apart.
这对双胞胎在婴儿时期长得非常像，我根本无法将他们分开。
9. crash
1）表示“使…撞毁; 撞毁（撞车，坠机）”，英文解释为“If a moving vehicle crashes or if the driver crashes it, it hits something and is damaged or destroyed.”举个🌰：
Her car crashed into the rear of a van.
她的汽车撞毁了一辆面包车的尾部。
2）表示“（发出巨响）猛撞，猛击”，英文解释为“to hit something or someone extremely hard while moving, in a way that causes a lot of damage or makes a lot of noise”，举个🌰：
We watched the waves crashing against the rocks.
我们看着海浪哗啦哗啦地冲击岩石。
3）表示“（计算机或系统）瘫痪，死机”，英文解释为“If a computer or system crashes, it suddenly stops operating.”，举个🌰：
My laptop's crashed again.
我的笔记本电脑又死机了。
10. stoop
stoop /stuːp/ 表示“门廊，门阶”，英文解释为“a raised flat area in front of the door of a house, with steps leading up to it”。
11. en route
法语，表示“在途中；在路上”，英文解释为“on the way; while travelling from/to a particular place”，后接(from)...to...；for...，如：a plane en route for Hangzhou 在飞往杭州途中的飞机，举个🌰：
The bus broke down en route from Boston to New York.
公共汽车在从波士顿到纽约的途中抛锚了。
12. memoir
memoir /ˈmɛmwɑː/ 表示“（尤指名人的）回忆录；自传”，英文解释为“an account written by sb, especially sb famous, about their life and experiences”。
13. dissolve
表示“解散；解除；终止（婚姻关系或业务协议）”，英文解释为“When a marriage or business arrangement is dissolved, it is officially ended.”举个🌰：
Their marriage was dissolved in 2019.
他们的婚姻于2019年走到了尽头。
补充：
📍dissolve into tears/laughter表示“情不自禁地哭/笑了起来”（to suddenly start to cry or laugh）举个🌰：
When he saw her picture, he dissolved into tears.
看见她的照片，他情不自禁地哭了起来。
14. in the depth(s) of sth
1）表示“处于极为…的消极情绪之中”，英文解释为“experiencing an extreme and negative emotion”举个🌰：
He was in the depths of despair/depression about losing his job.
他丢了工作深感绝望/沮丧。
2）表示“处于最艰难的时期”，英文解释为“during the worst period of a bad situation”举个🌰：
The company was started in the depth of the recession of the 1930s.
该公司创办于20世纪30年代经济最萧条的时期。
15. batter
batter /ˈbætə/ 作动词，表示“连续猛击；殴打；（风、雨或风暴等的）袭击”，英文解释为“to hit sb/sth hard many times, especially in a way that causes serious damage”举个🌰：
The area hasbeen battered bywinds.
该地区一直受到大风的袭击。
16. exuberant
exuberant /ɪɡˈzjuːbərənt/ 表示“（尤指人或其行为）精力充沛的，热情洋溢的，兴高采烈的”，英文解释为“(especially of people and their behaviour) very energetic”举个🌰：
Young and exuberant, he symbolizes Italy's new vitality.
青春年少、意气风发，他代表了意大利朝气蓬勃的新生力量。
17. resuscitate
resuscitate /rɪˈsʌsɪˌteɪt/ 表示“使苏醒；使恢复知觉；使复活”，英文解释为“to bring someone or something back to life or wake someone or something”举个🌰：
Her heart had stopped, but the doctors successfully resuscitated her.
她的心跳都已经停了，但医生们还是成功地把她从鬼门关拉了回来。
📍《经济学人》（The Economist）一篇讲述复工的文章中提到：Resuscitating demand is proving more difficult. 事实证明需求的复苏更加困难。
18. shatter
表示“ （使感情、希望或信念等）粉碎，破灭；被粉碎；被破坏”，英文解释为“to destroy sth completely, especially sb's feelings, hopes or beliefs; to be destroyed in this way”举个🌰：
Her self-confidence had been completely shattered.
她的自信心彻底崩溃了。
🎬电影《飞鹰艾迪》（Eddie the Eagle）中的台词提到：The most shattering physical and emotional experience of your life,你这辈子身心都受到巨大冲击的体验，
18. anew
anew /əˈnjuː/ 表示“重新；再”，英文解释为“if sb does sth anew , they do it again from the beginning or do it in a different way”举个🌰：
They started life anew in China.
他们在中国开始新生活。
19. stitch
stitch /stɪtʃ/ 1）作动词，表示“缝；缝合；缝补”，英文解释为“to sew two things together, or to repair something by sewing”举个🌰：
This button needs to be stitched back onto my shirt.
这粒纽扣得缝回到我的衬衫上。
2）作名词，可以表示“（缝合伤口的）缝线；一针”，英文解释为“a length of special thread used to join the edges of a deep cut in the flesh”。
20. bandage
表示“绷带”，英文解释为“A bandage is a long strip of cloth that is wrapped around a wounded part of someone's body to protect or support it.”
🩹Band-Aid表示“邦迪牌创可贴”，英文解释为“a brand name for a small piece of sticky cloth or plastic that you use to cover and protect a cut in the skin”；
🩹 plaster表示“橡皮膏，创可贴”，英文解释为“a small piece of sticky cloth or plastic that you use to cover and protect a cut in the skin”；
🩹sticking plaster表示“护创胶布，创可贴”，英文解释为“a piece of material that you can putover a small cut in the skin in order to protect it and keep it clean”。
句子解析:
An artist — or anyone — who is suffering from that blindness isn't someone who is seeing a reality the rest of us cannot face.一个正在忍受这种盲目性的艺术家——或者任何人——并不是看到了什么我们其他人无法面对的真相。
📍主句：An artist — or anyone — isn'tsomeone.
📍who引导定语从句1，修饰An artist or anyone，什么样的艺术家，或者任何人？who is suffering from that blindness 正在忍受这种盲目性的艺术家，或者任何人。
📍who引导定语从句2，修饰someone，什么人？who is seeing a reality 看到了现实（真相）的人。
📍省略了that/which的定语从句3：... seeing a reality [that/which] the rest of us cannot face. 什么真相？a reality [that/which] the rest of us cannot face 我们其他人无法面对的真相，reality在从句中作宾语。
