i'm not gonna write you a love song...

guys i'm a blogging rockstar! my cousin made a request. this post is going on my greatest posts compilation: volume one and will be the bonus track on my live dvd.

said cousin was particularly drawn to the quote "try again. fail again. fail better." she asked me to apply it to relationships, knowing full well i hate writing about relationships. she also wanted me to explain why i hate love songs so much. in high school, they would call this a "critical lens" if i found a literary element to throw in somewhere. after debating whether or not to accept this request, which was really a demand, i realized i'm a sucker for my cousins, and haven't used my AP English skills in a while. let's get academic in here.

i hate writing specifically about relationships for the same reason i hate 90% of most love songs and love angry rock music. every song is either about "you" or "them." about how damaged you are, or how much pain you are in, or how you have to pick up the pieces. or it's about their smile, or their eyes, or how you'd walk the earth to hear their laugh. well, you're never going to have to walk the earth or do anything physically impossible to prove your love and his/her special eyes are like one of three colors in varying shades.

these songs aren't real because they either dance around the purpose of love, mask it, or bury it. the hubris, or tragic flaw, (as witnessed in Shakespearean tragedies, like King Lear. take that third period Senior year!) is that they won't get to the heart of the purpose of love. love is self discovery, the discovery of someone else, and the trust that you can both build something outside of self that is greater than you are as individuals. love is when you combine smiling from your soul with the treatment you deserve and have been willing to give all along. those are both my definitions, not merriam-websters, just as a heads up. it's that simple. and also incredibly complex. it's what makes Charlotte Martin's "Tremble" such a beautiful song, and anything by the Jonas Brothers nauseating. and when we don't want to think about it, that's what Rage Against the Machine is for. chuck klosterman said that "art and love are the same thing: it’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you." this is why good love songs and great, and why bad ones are putrid garbage. one some level, art and love are synonymous.

"try again. fail again. fail better." love and life are inevitable every day if you're lucky. if there's anything we know about life is that it's not perfect, it can get really messy. you're going to want to quit, you are going to want nothing more than to stay. it has highs, it has lows, it has thresholds in both directions. but waking up everyday is worth it. love is a lot like life, but you find waking up next to someone else is worth it a part of you.

navigating the speed bumps of your own life is one thing, but when someone else is in the passenger's seat, the ride is entirely different. especially if you have the capacity to love someone so selflessly that you are buckling their seat belt before your own. you aren't going to get it right every time, just like you won't as individuals, as mothers and fathers and daughters and sons and sisters and brothers and cousins and friends etc. the fork in the road is inevitable. it's just a matter of if you will pick a prong together or go down separate paths.

break ups are a painful process of a shared love not withstanding circumstances or changes of self. where love is sometimes unconditional, we as people are not. it's perfectly human to be subject to the unforeseen or unanticipated. it's like how the glove that once was worn by O.J.'s murderous hands no longer fit at trial. when we grow, we sometimes outgrow. people are constantly evolving, changing, and growing. love can't always adjust. it's why people who still love each other get divorced, and why people who seem so right for each other on paper have no chemistry in the real world and why two seemingly incompatible people can make love work. if you've ever been through a break up where there was nothing you would change in a redo, you probably would change their desire to leave or the circumstance that caused the split, and you probably didn't feel like staying power was so underrated until you were in this person's rearview mirror. this means, you want to change them or the situation, and that is an indicator that different paths are where you belong.

should you both bear right at the fork in the road, you are going to hit some detours. and you can get lost together. you are going to fight. you are going to inexplicably get on each other's nerves. you are going to be wrong together. there will be no handy g.p.s. telling you where to go. but you'll do it together. it's hard to view failure as an opportunity to learn, especially when a significant other is significantly involved. but that's the beauty of having a partner in crime--one of you can post bail. and if you have guts, you end up better in the end for it and still facing each other and yourselves the next morning. you will fail more times than you can count on one hand from everything as simple as trying to make his/her favorite eggs to trying to figure out how you can hurt someone so badly who care about so much. you will never be perfectly wise, but you will fail again. and you will fail better.

i just hope avril lavine isn't the one trying to write your love story.
-k.



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Now playing: Barenaked Ladies - Lovers in a Dangerous Time
via FoxyTunes