Laughing With

This spiritual plea was the lead single from Jewish-American singer songwriter Regina Spektor's fifth studio album Far. The theme of this song is related to the old expression, "There are no atheists in trenches." The reasoning here is that it's easy to be an atheist when you're sitting comfortably in your living room, a bit harder when you're potentially minutes away from your death. The other half of this song's theme is that God allegedly does have a sense of humor. This idea goes back to an old quote, frequently butchered on the Internet. The incorrect version: "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh," not at all said by Voltaire. Correct version: "Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh," said by author H.L. Mencken in his work A Book of Burlesques in 1920. Voltaire lived in the 18th century, in France, years before the word "comedian" was even coined. He was witty, but he was Renaissance witty, not George-Burns-with-a-cigar witty.

This song is one of several on Far containing religious imagery. Spektor told Spin magazine: "I'm always fascinated with faith, religion, and spirituality, and what those things are to each other, or how they come together or don't come together. When I was done with this record I was like, 'Whoa, I have a lot of stuff here that's just about, like, religion.' Which is amazing. It wasn't planned, but it's one of those concepts that my mind is just fascinated with, and I'm always mulling over. Sometimes I'm really positive about religion, but, you know, sometimes I'm really sarcastic about it, too. Hey, that's God, that's life."

Spektor said in publicity materials that she arranged strings for this song, "but instead of a traditional quartet we had two cellos. I'm drawn to that, the lower sounds - bass, cello, tuba, that warm bottomy sound."