getting a phone call from your cousin that someone broke her heart sucks. i couldn't sleep, and i was thinking about heartbreak and about this phone call and the twinge of pain and overprotective instinct it brought.
i've gone on record before, and will again, about how i hate the majority of love songs and why. i remember talking to my dad about affairs of the heart, and he raised the point that extreme romance is absurd not because it's so corny or produced by Hallmark, but because nobody is going to ask you to "walk to the end of the earth" for them. but, they might ask you to stand with you while you deliver a eulogy or help move their parents from a nine person house to a modest home for two.
it was then that every "he'd walk a million miles just to hear her voice" and "i can't live without you" lyric started to sound more and more trite. if someone is going to walk a million miles to hear your voice, they should instead walk one mile to a local store and purchase a cell phone. and maybe a map, or a book called "The Idiot's Guide To How Miles Work." it's scientifically proven that you can in fact live without "that person" in your life. you were doing it the whole time before you fell in love.
everyone has blue, green, or brown eyes (or hazel if you're a heartbreaker or Kelly Clarkson). if you're going to write a song about someone's eyes, please don't write "i remember his/her eyes." please write "the light, the heat--in your eyes--i am complete--in your eyes--i see the door way to a thousand churches--and resolution to all of my fruitless searches." the best love songs are the real love songs; the ones that really say something (see Brandi Carlile: The Story). the best love songs aren't about how you feel about them, or how they feel about you; but about what the hell it all means when they collide.
the reason love songs have to be real is because those seemingly lofty, over-the-top, unreal moments are made completely real by love. similarly, looking back on the most real moments of a relationship should seem like you've fallen into something unreal. naturally, the end of such love, especially through the eyes of betrayal, brings about equally as sincere pain. which is expressed through crappy My Chemical Romance emo ballads or amazing Alice in Chains songs off of "Dirt." until you get angry. then it's Rage Against The Machine.
in a previous blog i said the purpose of any form of love is self discovery and the discovery of someone/something else. when that love is the "in love" type, it's also that both of you trust that you can build something outside of self that is greater than you are as individuals; that you combine smiling from your soul with the treatment you deserve and have been willing to give all along. i'm pretty sure i still agree with that.
love demands a certain type of balance and self-awareness; that's why you always seem to find love when you are self prioritizing. if you fall on the needy side, you reek of desperation, regardless of how cool, calm, and collected you think you are. if you break on the guarded side, you'll continue to hide behind fierce independence as if we can't see it's covering up the damage and hesitation yielded by a previous trainwreck, or how your parents didn't love you enough, or those other painful issues in life that keep you from pursuing anything, much less love. you have to be honest with yourself and clean these skeletons out of your closet because they'll grow up with you. then when someone great challenges you, you'll run into the arms of someone gently ordinary, perhaps your local bartender. or, when someone mediocre comes along, you treat them like a knight in shining armor even if they're just wearing a burger king crown on a carousel.
there's an iconic image of two swans bent at the neck facing each other to create the shape of a heart. don't try this at home, but it looks like a pretty uncomfortable position to be in. if you're so lost in staring at each other, you'll have blinders on to what lays ahead, and you'll crash and burn your way into the tunnel of love. if you never look at each other, you might as well navigate the waters on your own. best to swim side by side.
-k
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