Interview: Charles Spearin of The Happiness Project

Posted by Maximum Fun on 1st April 2009


Charles Spearin is a member of Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene, whose first solo project was released in February under the moniker The Happiness Project. To construct the album, Spearin interviewed his Toronto neighbors on the subject of happiness, then built melodies around fragments of their speech. Spearin recently spoke with Chris Bowman about community, life, and the likelihood that your neighbors are as amazing as his.

You could say this project was inspired by silence. Can you explain how The Happiness Project began?

Well there are a few different origins to the project that kind of came together nicely into one neat package. My father’s a Buddhist, and I was raised with Buddhism in my house and in my early twenties I started doing meditation retreats. In the practice of meditation there’s a lot of emphasis on reflection and awareness of your breath and that kind of thing. And in coming back home you really start to notice a lot of things you wouldn’t normally notice. And one of the things, in this case, would be the melody of speech. When people talk they’re so concerned with getting the meaning across that they don’t pay attention to the sound of their voice, unless they’re a radio announcer or something.

The main theme of the record is happiness, but you’re also making a statement about community. What made you turn to your neighbors?

Well, my neighbors are right there. That was one of the convenient things about the neighborhood. You know, I have two little kids now, and when you have kids the neighborhood becomes very significant. You live in it, it’s your home, it’s their world and I started to appreciate just how fortunate we are to have this community. It’s very mixed, it’s very healthy, and everybody looks out for each other. It’s downtown but it’s still safe. In a way I wanted to do a musical sketch of the community. So combining the thoughts of doing music on speech with the idea of doing a musical sketch of the neighborhood was putting two and two together and bringing my neighbors over to talk about happiness and life and listen to their voice for musical cadence.

Were you aware of how inspiring they were ahead of time?

Well, no. They’re just ordinary people. I think when you bring people into your home and give them a comfortable place and give them a chance to open up and be even a little bit philosophical a lot of people have a lot of wise things to say. It’s amazing, you never know what your neighbors are going to say, you never know who they are unless you encourage this kind of communication. Which really kind of amazed me. At first I was just using them to some degree as guinea pigs to just get the melody of their voice. But they kept saying the most wonderful things. So I shifted the focus a little bit.

It’s a shame you had to use such small snippets. I’m sure the rest of the interviews were peppered with other wise words.

Yeah, there were some great moments. Mrs. Morris had a great talk about her grandmother living to be 126 years old in Jamaica. She’s got lots of great stories.

At a recent live performance you mentioned (jokingly) that you had decided to become an expert on happiness and that you were reading Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. Do you think at some base level there is a universal formula for happiness?

Certainly in Buddhism there’s a universal formula for suffering. That’s, basically, thinking about yourself. Become self absorbed and you’ll become miserable. So the natural opposite of that is to think about others and you’ll be happy. Or let go of your idea of self then you’re more likely to find happiness. That’s part of The Happiness Project as well. If you’re listening to the world, you’re less likely to be self-absorbed.

You admitted to being unfair to one of your subjects, Marissa, by asking this question. So I’m going to play the role of you and ask, what quality do you think is the most important quality in life?

That’s a hard question. That’s a bastard question actually. I can’t believe she got through it. (After a long deliberating pause) I can’t believe she answered it so quickly! It doesn’t take much to feel lucky, you know? Maybe that’s the important quality I’m looking for. Appreciation. Being able to appreciate the life that you have without struggling to find something else.

The Happiness Project is available now on Arts & Crafts. You can hear the beautiful music Spearin created here.