With yesterday's blog post "Happiness Bores Me" fresh in my mind, I just watched Laurie Anderson's commencement address to the Class of 2012 at the School of Visual Arts in New York. As part of her advice to the graduating class, she told the students to follow one of the lessons of her Tibetan meditation teacher: "Try to practice feeling sad without actually being sad."

She went on to explain:

"This is really, really hard. I mean there are lots of sad things in the world and you don't want to miss them because you're afraid of them. Because much of art comes out of regrets and loss and sadness. But you don't want to become sad. So try it, to feel sad without being sad."

I thought this was a remarkably useful addition to yesterday's blog post. I mean, in case you were wondering, I'm really pretty ecstatic when I'm painting all those haunted faces. So I thought I should clarify: I don't actually think being happy is boring. I'm just not that interested in grappling with the feeling of it or making art about it. :-)

Here's the entire address by Laurie Anderson, in case you're interested in watching the whole thing: