Not only do I have flu, I am also suffering writer's constipation: I can't seem to write a single word about love. Which makes teenage romances hard. I mean-- teenagers are by nature dumb, their experiences immediate but shallow. What does a person say in love that can be interesting to others?
What kind of a curse is this? Writing about love? What the hell? I am much better at killing people off, making them brood over insignificant failures. What in hell is love, anyway? I have been listening to the "October" piece by Tchaikovsky, and that seems as close as it gets without being sappy, without descending to muck. The trade in cheese and corn is eluding me; movie romance, especially one targeted at teenagers who skip school to smooch in a dark theater, requires much cheese, much corn. The combination must taste like puking in your mouth a little, and that is what I am trying to do: write something that will make the viewers puke a little in their mouths.
I need help, people. The few of you who come to this site--tell me what it is like, this thing called love, if you've been lucky enough to articulate it after experiencing it. Give me a few phrases to go on.
Loves is what makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. It is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the banality of human existence. Sometimes, Love is stronger than a man's convictions. And as Woody Allen puts it, "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down."
ReplyDeleteAre teenagers dumb naturally?Really?
ReplyDeleteThis is how my short lived experience of "love" went:
-That when I closed my eyes, I saw the object of my love (hereafter,TOML) spread over in my mind´s eyes, like on a giant cinema projector screen (whats that called?)
-I did not mind sharing my last piece of favorite steak giving TOML bigger half of it.
-That I felt euphoric (like gliding over on a mass of cottony clouds on a warm, bright Sunday morning) and felt immensely grateful just to be alive.(to articulate it is just like taking Ecstasy :-))
-Suffered from bouts of absent-mindedness, as I would be walking on the same road many times, and missed the turnings.I was a bit like Einstein, except I was occupied by the thoughts of TOML, not dreary space-time continuum.
-For once the message alert beeps were musical and I cared to charge my cell phone.
-Had confidence enough to dust off my musty "literature exercise book" and fill it up with poems.So, I was natural poet for once.
Yes, these are some of the love cliches which I found out were in fact true, so there is no shame in being a banal writer using just those.If you want more, you have to subscribe and possibly make payments through pay pal :-)
Anyway, the important point is that after- effects, after it is over, is much more like a terrible hangover, when you are left naked (figuratively, might as well be literally) cuddling yourself, hanging on to dear sanity.I suggest you to take e, then you are chemically induced to feelings of love without the hassles, and suffer from hangover exactly same, except that it is curable.
Am I the new "love-guru"around?
thanks, guys.
ReplyDelete@Anon: why short lived? why in quotes, if the experience clearly endeared itself to your memory?
@J-Baba: Damn you and your fantastic memory, if indeed you quoted that from memory! One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen on-screen is Muriel Hemingway in Manhattan, the sort of a vision that makes a man want to believe in love, especially if he imagines himself a nerd like Woody Allen, but without the virile wit, the Jewishness, the intellect or the sexual prowess.
Bongum Baba Bholenath! I wish my memory was as good but alas it is not. I remembered bits of that monologue from the movie and I thought it was quite relevant to the discussion here. I had to go online to get the exact quote. In a lot of ways, it reflects on how I feel about love at the moment. Especially with how cynical I've become after the whole fiasco with Burrito....
ReplyDelete