Happy “Get Over It” Day from The Long Afternoon

For a band with many songs that explore themes of resentment and regret, on both the personal and the public level, “Get Over It Day”—a day dedicated to putting the past in the past, and keeping it there—seems like a pretty good idea.So on March 9, we recognize “Get Over It Day.” Yeah, it’s one of those not-really-a-holiday holidays, but it still seems like a reasonable thing to add to one’s calendar, whoever you are.  As the day’s originators and promoters point out, we all have something we need to get over.  Welcome to the planet!

Here’s a little more back story, from www.getoveritday.com:

March 9th is GET OVER IT DAY!® Strategically the midpoint between Valentine’s Day & April Fools Day, it was conceived 10+ years ago by a guy named Jeff while attempting to get over an ex-girlfriend. But he recognized it was a universal concept that MANY could relate to so he wrote the poem*(below) and put up GetOverItDay.com. It quickly went viral and has since been covered by Good Morning America, ESPN SportsCenter, and 1000+ media outlets worldwide!

This rings a bell with us not just because of the resentment hymns in our catalog, but because we specifically wrote a song about this very need to keep moving forward on our third record, An Index of Maladjustments. Here it is:

A lot of people seem to take “So Fucking Sad” as a serious song, but we’ve always intended it to be tongue-in-cheek, and have even referred to it as a “oh-get-over-it anthem.” It’s not that we aren’t sympathetic to the plights and sorrows of the characters in the verses, it’s just that beyond a certain point, you need to stop bitching about it. Or at least write a song about it instead.

So a brief outline: we’ve got a character who gives up on her ambitions, another who fantasizes about settling petty grievances that date back decades, and a third who obsesses about the Ph.D. she walked away from. They’re all stuck, stewing in their sorrow and complaining about them to others. But the crux of the song comes in the break, which points a finger at peoples’ tendencies to overemphasize whatever “bad” things have happened to them, be they major or minimal:

It doesn’t matter if the bigger things go right, because the little things still bring you to your knees.
If you’re not hungry, and if you don’t sleep alone, then you’ll still be consumed by minor tragedies. 

Tragedy is real. Sorrow is real. And there’s a time and place for it: you can’t wish it away.  But at the same time, if you’re going to live, you have to put those feelings in perspective and keep going, because regret and sadness will always be ready to eat you alive if you’ll let them.

That’s what “So Fucking Sad” is saying, but it’s clear that we didn’t express the idea in a way that was crystal clear. That’s an occupational hazard of making cryptic indie rock, I guess.

And since it seems like we really do need to say it, we’ll say it here: stop being consumed by your tragedies, major or minor.

Happy Get Over It Day!

 

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