At least I don’t have to post *my* (ukulele) cover of FinD, now.

In The Little Prince, the pilot says, “it is such a secret place, the land of tears.” We’ve tried valiantly in @marchxness.bsky.social to open that place up to one another. Mazzy was never up once that I saw, all day, by even one vote. But I appreciate everyone who voted & sent notes or messages.

These games! I am giving up the ghost on my Paula Cole essay, and want to encourage you all to go vote for @cbiondolillo.bsky.social & MAZZY STAR!!!

Collective Soul & I have pulled ahead but we're getting serious pushback from Des'ree & could still use your vote! VOTE Collective Soul "The World I Know" by NOON ET!! marchxness.com#/2ndround-co... (And while you're at it, vote Mazzy Star / @cbiondolillo.bsky.social too!) @marchxness.bsky.social

A little levity amidst all the sadness is not a bad thing.

The last paper Chris drafted was supposed to be an astrophysics primer. He told me I’d inspired him to revise the title to smth “whimsical.” I never got a copy, but he sent pics of the front page and first footnote. It remains unpublished. @marchxness.bsky.social marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo...

For the @marchxness.bsky.social crowd. I was going to save this fun toy for later, but I am pretty wrung out by the ratio, so here you go (headphones on and it's better on a full screen): www.alancowen.com/music

Like sketching a falling star just before it burns out, @cbiondolillo.bsky.social captures the intoxication of new love and the devastation of loss. Beautiful and absolutely gutting @marchxness.bsky.social essay on Mazzy Star (and the Little Prince and Chris). marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo...

Vote Mazzy!

i am still sobbing (sobbing & posting) on my couch after reading this beautiful essay by @cbiondolillo.bsky.social —vote mazzy!

Mazzy is falling behind, and I’m torn between wanting to continue to try—to do all I can, and also wanting to look away because I can’t bear it. Even though we are supposed to vote “which is sadder” —this essay losing doesn’t mean my grief wasn’t griefy enough. @marchxness.bsky.social

"If you could choose how to spend your last year, would you pick falling in love?" @cbiondolillo.bsky.social on Mazzy Star. on love. on everything. marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo...

Been a rough 1st half for me & Collective Soul & our backs are against the wall...but in the words of Ed Roland, "you don't know what good feels like until you feel bad." We're gonna regroup at half & come out ready to go! Plenty of time to READ & VOTE COLLECTIVE SOUL! marchxness.com#/2ndround-co...

Raitt's sad. But, she said, in dramatic, I'm voting for the more wrenching @marchxness.bsky.social essay. @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social & a complicated Alanis: "I told myself I needed nothing, but it wasn’t true & I’m grateful I don’t listen to that voice anymore." marchxness.com#/2ndround-mo...

Down by two. Two! 💔 Vote for Flowers! @marchxness.bsky.social marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo... Anyway. Here are some memorial flowers, even though it’s only March.

I had Mazzy going deep in my bracket, BEFORE i read @cbiondolillo.bsky.social's essay, and now...I can't get more sad about a song and someone's story than this right now. I wanna see them in the finals. marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo...

If you're in the mood for a good cry, and I mean a GOOD cry...read this essay on Mazzy Star by @cbiondolillo.bsky.social . I'd love to see it get some more votes marchxness.com/2ndround-fol...

Instead of razzing or obsessing over the scores in some (unfortunately unpredicted!) transference of grief, I bought Chris’s flowers a day early and will draw them. Tomorrow could’ve been happy month 20! but will be instead sad month 8. marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo... @marchxness.bsky.social

With Mazzy down allll day so far, this is normally the point of Xness wherein I’d start (good-naturedly!) razzing my opponent. But even though I don’t like Brick, I can’t fault Cecily’s essay. marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo... I don’t know how else to campaign for the sadness of lost possibilities.💔💔

It would’ve been a lot cooler if my round two @marchxness.bsky.social game had been on the 13th (the date of our hello) instead of the 12th (the goodbye we didn’t even get). Chris and Mazzy can’t seem to pull ahead (so far). I hope that changes soon! marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo...

I'm 100% CollSoul this @marchxness.bsky.social round. Romeo+Juliet is a kind of sad (frustrating kind, to my old lady mind) and Emily makes a good case for Des'ree's wailing. But I could use the sliver of redemption Jam offers in that dove & personal coda of sobriety. marchxness.com#/2ndround-co...

I linked this playlist in my @marchxness.bsky.social essay on Mazzy Star, but here it is directly: open.spotify.com/playlist/0Yd... The one contribution I was allowed at Chris' Celebration of Life (organized by his ex-wife) was to play this in the background. It's a mix of his faves & songs abt him.

It’s time for space time and stars and exactly one year of love. Thank you for reading. @marchxness.bsky.social marchxness.com#/2ndround-fo...

Even though (my) ghost (and all time fave @kristinhersh.bsky.social) is getting my vote again, @aesb.bsky.social is making it tough. B&S “understood just how delicious melancholy was, and how the place of sadness was always better as a place you built in your mind.” Yes! @marchxness.bsky.social

I was and I do know it! #thesadness #theglasses

I would like to reiterate that country is not my jam (with exceptions). But damnit @mossyair.bsky.social “grief is the price we pay for love”—did I already pull that quote? It bears repeating! Sometimes grief is our only evidence of love. (NB: My fave poem says it, “the wages of dying is love.”)

Because of my own essay, this @marchxness.bsky.social has been particularly weird—like I’m repping a song & a person & a relationship. The latter two being gone. So sometimes I cast a vote for Chris. Tonight it’s for his absolute favorite band, REM, and “It’s crazy what we could have had.”

Round 2 of @marchxness.bsky.social is seriously no rest (for those of us wickedly skipping Aristotle homework). We’ve got @mfitejohnson.bsky.social making it tough with lines like “We know it will hurt, but the hurting reminds us we’re still here” summing up so much of what I love about sad songs.

I didn’t have time today, what with day job, philosophy class, and moving prep… BUT, I got my votes in before the buzzer! <yawn> amazing round one, everyone. So much sublime sadness and vulnerability in so many of the essays.

Even though Last Day is a key track in my personal "sad bastard singalong" playlist (actual name), Gravley's @marchxness.bsky.social makes a harrowing and convincing case for the stakes of the sadness in Nirvana's Sappy.

Having once been up against a juggernaut of a song in round one, I probably would've cast a protest vote in Montgomery's favor either way, despite Campbell's admirable concision. But I love the G'pa-Westerberg song and it makes me feel much more sad than the Clapton.

💔 @silashansen.bsky.social gets my vote for invoking a very specific kind of @marchxness.bsky.social sadness, "not the loss of something I’d experienced, but the realization that I will likely never feel that, that it’s a feeling entirely out of my reach."

while Tori is queen of sads & Donohue does great work to make the case, @chrislkeller.com pulls at the heartstrings of my own complicated feelings abt home, "it is about metamorphosis and what happens when someone passes through different places, among different people, long enough to be changed."

Needa get the dust out of this room, already! This, in @cherylgraham.bsky.social ‘s @marchxness.bsky.social piece on Kate Bush, “we can only hope we give others “moments of pleasure” that keep us alive in their memories just as they have done for us.”

Wow. @cooperdart.bsky.social ‘s @marchxness.bsky.social piece on B&D is fantastic. “And it's not about happiness right there. It's about salvation. It's about, you know, loss in a way.”

I loved the Crowes even though my friends snubbed them for months. @levin.bsky.social ‘s @marchxness.bsky.social really nails how the band was more than just a derivative bridge between metal & grunge. However, I’m also repping my own ghost story, so this vote’s KHersh & @anniezaleski.bsky.social

Your Ghost was my (reluctant) 2nd choice to write about this @marchxness.bsky.social for just the reason @anniezaleski.bsky.social puts so aptly: “it’s comforting to think that someone we love is just a phone call away, even in the afterlife, and that we can summon them at will to come visit” 💜💜

Can I tell a funny story? Last spring when I added my name to the lottery, when my @marchxness.bsky.social sadness was still months away, I’d talked through essay/song ideas with Chris. Hey Jealousy was a contender for a funny essay about a dumb bf from college who thought it was “Hey Chelsea.”

I think the below needed @marchxness.bsky.social for visibility. But the app wouldn’t let me repost it. :/

I sweartagawd the inability to edit posts is going to do me in today.

Also, it is linked in the bio, but in case you missed it, Chris Potter was an amazing person long before being my boyfriend: www.registerguard.com/obituaries/p... While I’m not mentioned, I did add some photos and color commentary to the “memory board.”

My @marchxness.bsky.social essay was not easy to write, but I’m hoping there’s some beauty to be found in it, along with the sadness. Chris was generally terrible at selfies. Here are some failed attempts that still make me laugh.

My @marchxness.bsky.social essay (subtitled ‘how last summer went’) is live... Please vote for it! Here’s part of that long bank of windows with a sunset:

My @marchxness.bsky.social essay about Mazzy Star and The Little Prince and a particle physicist is live, y’all. It’s not really something I feel like I should hype up? I’ll probably just be posting some pics… Thank you for reading it and voting your heart! marchxness.com#/1stround-gi...

Again with the magically delicious matchup—both essays have some anxious trappings, but end on hopeful notes (har), while neither song seems to offer hope so much as a vehicle for objectless anguish. Des’ree is sadder, objectively. But GGD is such an angsty ear worm…. Ugh. <runs out of the room>

This right here is why it got my vote.

Two great experiments in this @marchxness.bsky.social match-up, and two redemptions from awkwardness set to songs about not getting over it. I’m voting with my big-ass nineties glasses this round, because the story in Stay (not to mention Loeb’s flat hair) resonate only *slightly* more with me.

… but Grossman taps into my four-eyes-sad-girl ‘90s hope for a secret admirer who Got Me. “The smart best friend would wear those glasses to signify nobody would ever care about her, but you secretly knew she was the best character because you weren't like the others, you saw things differently.”

Okay, first of all, *of course* I’m smitten with the text/photos/redacted faces in Barnes’ @marchxness.bsky.social And with delightful lines like “I’m a little past lunch banquet chicken breasts and boxed cookies when I remember (and quickly forget) the first face and name in the boyfriend book”…

Two strong players in this match-up. Even though the lyrics are “sad” I’m not *ensaddened* by either track. But both essays are captained by moving sadspeople. This vote is going to take some thinking.