I’ve thought about questions like this for a long time. I spent a long time on “What is happiness?” This question is almost as complicated and interesting as that one.

I speak passively, even coldly, but this is obviously something thats been bothering me for a long time, something which I feel very passionate about. The question was there through my whole relationship with Kayley and has weighed heavily on my mind since it ended.

My first thought is to wonder whether the concept has any meaning at all.  But of course it does. We use it all too often. We mean something by it. The word “love” puts a name on a desire, just like the word “happiness.”  Happiness entails the desire for purpose and for a positive (subjectively so) experience in our existence (this was my conclusion before). What desire is love? Why do we seek it so diligently and so desperately?

Love, of course, is a social desire. As I am coming to understand it, love is born out of the intense loneliness of our existence. Our experience entails that we can only know ourselves, and even that somewhat hazily (as we constantly recreate and redefine ourselves in our every day lives). We cannot be someone else, i.e. we cannot experience their experience, seeing the world as they do, with their set of knowledge and memories, with their train of thought, with their bodily experience, and their social situation. So we can never fully comprehend another being. All we can do to connect, to comprehend another being, is to use our limited and woefully insufficient tools–words, physical contact, imagination, art. Thus loneliness is born, an intense feeling of disconnect. These people around us appear like objects, unknowns, unable to be comprehended.  Likewise we see others and know that we are not comprehended but are constantly misunderstood and mis-characterized. We desire to be comprehended and we desire to comprehend.

While our mediums of communication are, in the end, ineffective at completely knowing another person they are enough to give us a sense of another’s existence, a hope for the intertwining of two existences, for the beginnings of a mutual comprehension of another’s experience.

Nature has built for us a physical counterpart for this philosophical desire. We call its sex.  But in a broader sense it is the whole sense of attraction that we feel for family–for children, for lovers, for parents–all of which are either a part of us or which we exchange physical intimacy with in–all of which is physical

So as far as I can see there are three reasons we love, which essentially makes up the three elements of love.

1. The desire to comprehend another’s existence, and to be comprehended
2. The overcoming of loneliness, to share one’s experience
3. Sexual and physical desire

These are the reasons we seek relationships. Elements of these three are what form love. The second involves the sort of thing we have when we say that someone is “really fun to be around.”  The first is more implicit, involving knowing the other person–on a simple level their likes and dislikes, on a more complex one, their deeper desires, feelings, and preferences. Both one and two involve the sort of thing we share when we help each other out and listen to another’s thoughts, concerns and feelings.

Thats my basic conclusion. I have some more questions about the role of sex in relation to the first two but that is an issue for another moment. Specifically, I wonder about the classifications we use in “friend”, “lover”, “boyfriend/girlfriend”, “fiancee”, “husband/wife.” What do all these labels mean given the three reasons that people love? How does relationships change between each? What use do these labels have for us? I have some thoughts on it but I’ll wait for another post.

On my way home from Rock Hill today I was listening to some really good music. First I listened to the new album by the EBM/futurepop freakin awesome band VNV Nation. I was my first listen through and I was pleased that Ronan (the lead singer/songwriter/mixer) was able to keep up his same ethereal sound with the nice balance of fast beats and slow interludes. And, as always, his lyrics were fantastic.

Then I switched to some post-hardcore, a genre that a lot of the people I know stay away from. As far as I can tell, two types of people listen to post-hardcore: morons who just like to scream and thrash around mosh-pit style, or those who feel incredibly passionately about life and the things these songwriters are talking about. Most people say post-hardcore is “emo” but the stereotype…umm, people just don’t get it.  These bands…they know something about life. They feel it deeply. Post-hardcore is about weaving the chaos, turmoil, and absurdity of life in with the beautiful, worthwhile, and passionate desires. The alteration of loud and soft, the screaming interwoven into soft, sometimes whispered, sometimes beautifully sung lyrics–these are all meant to capture the central paradox of life. These people are serious, yes, but they feel like they have a reason to be serious. These people struggle with depression, yes, but they say that there is a reason to be depressed. But most of all, these singers just seem intelligent.  I mean, some of them are freakin brilliant with the songs they put together.

Take these two songs: Deliverance! by From First to Last and A Goat in Sheep’s Rosary by From Autumn to Ashes (similar names, yes). Both of these are incredibly deep songs that speak very wisely about life. Deliverance is about how we want freedom but don’t seem to realize that freedom is only worthwhile if we can live with ourselves.  Then A Goat In Sheeps Rosary is even more incredible. I think these guys pretty much captured the emphasis of existential absurdism in one song. Amazing.

Anyways, why do I talk about music now? Because there is an element within me that lives off this stuff and I don’t think I’ve ever really found anyone who sees completely eye to eye with me on this. I mean, someone who is smart, deep, and able to listen to this stuff. I wish I had a friend who I could just sit around with and put this music on and we could talk through the night bout life. Curt and I can do that with EBM, so thats good. But he won’t touch the post-hardcore. Oh well.

I guess maybe I’m just too intense. Maybe this has to be a personal thing. Maybe this is a relic of a dramatic idealization of the group of passionate, deep feeling, friends who weren’t afraid to feel and to talk and to dance and to scream–or do other stuff like wear crazy clothes, dye our hair crazy colors–and to do it all with an intelligence and purpose that could not be denied. This is a crazy desire because it won’t ever happen.

So it goes.

Yay! I did some writing! This was a random unexpected thing I just pulled out of nowhere. Its a collage, which is a piece that takes a variety of mediums, scenes, clips, and pulls them together to comment on something. The connections are not immediately obvious…but I think the ones in this case are. If you really follow this blog (as if anyone does) you’ll recognize parts of this.  The last line was taken from the post I did two hours ago–it was the inspiration for the whole thing.  This is just a draft–finished it 10 min ago–so let me know what you think!

The phone was hot as I held it against my sweaty face.  The air was thick, mixing with the moisture on my cheek to create a glue to keep the phone there.  My hand is tired from holding the position.  In one ear I heard crickets and frogs forming the chorus of the river. In the other I heard the sweet voice of a wise old friend comforting me in a time of loneliness.  The picnic table on which I sat was empty. The phone shot heartstrings across space and contracted time.

“Well, Josh,” said her sage-like voice. “I can’t really talk to you over the phone. There’s something about seeing someone face to face—you just can’t read them over the phone, can’t really get to know them.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Well I’ll be coming up this weekend. We’ll talk then.”

The phone dropped away from my ear, the miracle gone dead.   Speaking to it would not make a friend appear. Little frogs leapt beneath my feet. I greeted them as friends and pushed the phone away. (continue reading…)