Philosophical musings on love.
Shelley wrote a poem called "Love's Philosophy," but it wasn't philosophical. The poem was brief and typically sappy with mush about kissing and so on.
I had gotten excited when I saw the title because I had hoped that I would read the poem and be struck with some definitive philosophy of love, some final word on what it is, what it should feel like, what it wears, how it parts its hair. In other words, I had hoped to know how to spot it. The "real thing," as it were.
My attitude on the subject has changed over the years. I vacillate between several conflicting theories. I even took the time once to analyze every romantic relationship that I had ever been a party to in order to find some clue as to what it all means.
How can it be so desirable and also so frightening? How is it so assured and so confusing? Why are there so many conflicting methods of assessing True Love? And is there even such a thing or is that idea just another ploy of Plato and his capital letters to infuse the world with order and control?
Or controls. Weren't eidos really just a control group in experimental thinking? There is this control version of True Love against which all other variants might be compared.
But I don't know what that control looks like.
I know that as heartbroken as I've ever been, I've never stuck my head in an oven like Sylvia Plath. But then maybe those loves, those heartbreaks, were not real. Maybe they were something else.
At one time, I would have sworn to you that love is strictly speaking just an emotion, like anger or sadness or boredom, and that, as a result, it shouldn't be held to any higher standards than other emotions. No one expects to be angry forever or happy forever or sad forever. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, you might say so, but you know deep down that all things must pass. Emotions are fleeting and fickle and vaporous. But, for some reason, people believe that love, True Love, that is, will last forever.
I hope, and maybe that's what True Love means. Maybe when we talk about this mysterious thing called love we are talking about a specialized sort of hope.
We are so alone inside of our necessary boundaries, and I suppose it is natural that we would hope that someone might be able to pass into us and to annihilate them. That someone might say just the sort of thing, just the right combination of "alakazam" and "abracadabra" and "open sesame" to split us open.
I had gotten excited when I saw the title because I had hoped that I would read the poem and be struck with some definitive philosophy of love, some final word on what it is, what it should feel like, what it wears, how it parts its hair. In other words, I had hoped to know how to spot it. The "real thing," as it were.
My attitude on the subject has changed over the years. I vacillate between several conflicting theories. I even took the time once to analyze every romantic relationship that I had ever been a party to in order to find some clue as to what it all means.
How can it be so desirable and also so frightening? How is it so assured and so confusing? Why are there so many conflicting methods of assessing True Love? And is there even such a thing or is that idea just another ploy of Plato and his capital letters to infuse the world with order and control?
Or controls. Weren't eidos really just a control group in experimental thinking? There is this control version of True Love against which all other variants might be compared.
But I don't know what that control looks like.
I know that as heartbroken as I've ever been, I've never stuck my head in an oven like Sylvia Plath. But then maybe those loves, those heartbreaks, were not real. Maybe they were something else.
At one time, I would have sworn to you that love is strictly speaking just an emotion, like anger or sadness or boredom, and that, as a result, it shouldn't be held to any higher standards than other emotions. No one expects to be angry forever or happy forever or sad forever. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, you might say so, but you know deep down that all things must pass. Emotions are fleeting and fickle and vaporous. But, for some reason, people believe that love, True Love, that is, will last forever.
I hope, and maybe that's what True Love means. Maybe when we talk about this mysterious thing called love we are talking about a specialized sort of hope.
We are so alone inside of our necessary boundaries, and I suppose it is natural that we would hope that someone might be able to pass into us and to annihilate them. That someone might say just the sort of thing, just the right combination of "alakazam" and "abracadabra" and "open sesame" to split us open.
posted by Autumn at 12:44 PM
1 Comments:
I listened to it just now. I have to say I'm not surprised. I can't decide if I'm relieved or disappointed to know that love is about as magical as an aneurism. Nonetheless, however it is explained or whatever the mechanics, it's still a mysterious and fascinating phenomenon.
Whenever I hear people quibbling over, for instance, whether the universe was created in 6 days by God's free-wheeling hocus pocus or whether it was just a cosmic belch, I can't help but think, however you explain it, you can't explain away the oddity, the beauty, and the ineffability of it. It's all just semantics really. And none of it much matters, except as fodder for writers, artists, philosophers, theologists, toddlers, and physicists. (And anyone sitting in, say, Lucky's Lounge or Molly's after two in the morning.)
Post a Comment
<< Home