Otherwise being a human is boring

Our computer system is still not working here at work, and it's beyond ridiculous right now, but they are doing what they can to fix it. So far I have read probably every Christian blog in the universe (well, close, I have to plug them into my google reader to read them because I can't access actual blogs, so my google reader is now having a meltdown) and every article in the newspaper. So, I could perhaps write something of some significance about the many encouraging and interesting things I've read. But, instead, I'm now full up so I have been listening to live concerts of The Swell Season. Glen Hansard, the Irish lead singer, is very entertaining, and often introduces his songs with blurbs that make me laugh out loud, even when the following song is full of a kind of desperate melancholy. At one point he says, "the more of these gigs I do, the more I realise that I am just treating you all as psychiatrists".

So, given that we have been urged of late to take more notice of our culture I have been taking note of some of what this guy says, as at least representing the state of mind of some portion of the population (even though he's not Australian!). One of the wonderful things about songs and poetry is that in them people write things that you would perhaps never detect in general conversation. So, below I've written out how he introduces one song. In it he presents what he sees as the two ways a person can look at life. It's nothing profoundly philosophical, it's more just the view from the street. I reckon he's at least close to right in summing up pervading views, based on what underlies the conversations that I have with the people around me - though I do wonder whether some hold both views together. What are some other views, in a nutshell, that you hear out there of what people think we're doing here? (I don't usually ask questions in posts, because the silence can then be deafening, but there's a question.) Here's the song blurb:

This song is like a little consoling lullaby to yourself. It's written in that lovely state of mind where you're (pause), you're drunk - but, you know, it's neither good nor bad, it's just (does something that makes people laugh) ... This song was written in the middle of a field in the middle of the night in the middle of Ireland looking up - I'd like to say looking up at the stars but looking up at a cloudy grey black sky and knowing that the stars are somewhere beyond it and pretending that it's a lovely starry night in the middle of summer, even though you'll probably have pneumonia in the morning. And it's a song about looking up and asking the big questions to the man above or to the stars above or to whoever ... just that beautiful metaphor that there's the sky and the answers are up there somewhere - because otherwise being a human is boring. There are two ways to look at, I think, everything: we're either a fungus on this earth that's eating it up and chewing it up and we're all going to die, or we're here to sow poetry into the ground and to do as much good was we possibly can. (Everyone cheers!) Some of us live the other way and some of us live that way. It's really up to yourself I guess."

Then he sings Star, Star, which contains this verse:

Star star teach me how to shine shine

Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind

'Cause I don't understand these people

Who say we're all asleep

They'll toss and turn forever

But no rest will they find...