I wasn't expecting this book to arrive for another 2-4 weeks. Apparently Amazon's shipping schedule is not to be trusted! The book itself isn't really a book. More like watercolor paper that is folded in half and sewn together, placed inside a hardcover (cardboard and fabric) sleeve. But I was so excited to see it that I couldn't restrain myself and spent some time unabashedly hugging it.....
... and kissing it...
After the mini-lovefest ended, I sat myself down to take a peek inside and see just what kind of poet Keanu is. Would it be heady, intellectual stuff? Playful, sexy stuff? Abstract, impressionable stuff? I crack the cover page and....
...Heyyyy! Wait a minute. Wait. Just. One. Minute. Here. Is this it? Is this really it? REALLY? You're kidding. You are kidding me.. right? This can't really be it. I don't believe it.
While there is nothing wrong with drawing a hot sorrow bath... this is not what I was expecting. Not by a long shot! I was imagining gorgeous paintings and heady, intellectual, heartbreaking poems. POEMS. As in multiple poems. As in lots of words on lots of pages. But the more I turn the page, the more I see it is just like that first page. Each displaying one big bleeding childish watercolor with 5 - 7 words beneath it...
I admit I let my frustration and high expectations get the best of me for just a moment. I wanted to inflict pain on Ode to Happiness. I am not proud of this, but I bit him. I wanted to tear the stitching from his pages and send him fluttering across the floor so that, instead, he would become an Ode to My Unhappiness...
..But then the violence slowly left me and I realized that it wasn't Keanu's fault, or the poor little poetry book's fault. It was my own fault for getting so worked up about it in the first place. I took the book's blurb too seriously, I created unreasonable expectations. Expectations that the book and it's author could never truly live up to. So I can't really blame them, you know.
And I can give the friggen thing 5 stars for working a fucking amazing blurb out of so little actual content and getting me to fork over 36 bucks based on the fact that I'm a sucker:
"*Ode to Happiness is a grown-up's picture book, a charming reminder not to take oneself too seriously. With drawings by painter Alexandra Grant, text by actor Keanu Reeves, and in collaboration with mutual friend Janey Bergam, this facsimile artists' book is about making the best of a bad situation. In the tradition of a classic "hurtin' song", Reeves' text externalizes a melancholy internal monologue and subtly pokes fun at it. Grant's images, delicately realised in sombre inky washes, reflect the dark and light, the pathos and humour of the text. Neither entirely earnest nor wholly ironic, Ode to Happiness is both a meditation and a gentle tease about how we cope with life's sorrows."
Gentle Tease... Ha!
*blurb credit goes to Goodreads
Has laoreet percipitur ad. Vide interesset in mei, no his legimus verterem. Et nostrum imperdiet appellantur usu, mnesarchum referrentur id vim.
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