On What Love Is
Edward Ong
Love is mimicry. There should be little doubt about this as you observe how Monkey A observes Monkey B de-flea Monkey C, and then proceeds to replicate the same tender act on Monkey D. The “mechanism” to de-flea, biologists would say, is already embedded in Monkey A (see it as a gift from Evolution), but the setting-into-motion of it comes from observation. Love, though said to work in mysterious ways, also works in this anti-climactically banal fashion.
What most claim to be love is, in actuality, copied behaviour. You watch your peers fall in love (more often than not with the opposite sex), hold hands, play footsie, coo all the right things at the right time, lock lips, and then you think to yourself: A-ha! So that’s how you should play Falling In Love. Little do you know (in fact you don’t really want to know) the very act of Falling In Love is an elaborate charade that has been played by billions of lovers in only slightly differing ways throughout human history. But Wait! you say. Just because billions of others have done it before, does it necessarily have to be a terrible thing? Of course not, you confused, love-infected Casanova. There is nothing wrong with doing what the whole universe has done before. What is wrong is that you have been blithely unaware of it all this time, and that, my little lover, could have dire, unpleasant consequences.
Ask any 18-year-old in 2010 about what love is, he will quote Lady Gaga verbatim:
I want your ugly, I want your disease
I want your everything as long as it’s free
I want your love (love-love-love I want your love)
It is all fine and dandy for Lady Gaga, who is already a multi-millionaire and may have lovers in throngs, but for common lovers like us this curious approach to Love is impractical and misleading. Perhaps Lady Gaga should not bear the brunt of vulgarising Love (she is after all only one woman, and an unassuming one at that). If blame is to be dispensed, it should be done in the direction of the media, which is solely responsible for creating a corrupt culture of Love that our young generation has faithfully copied.
Where should one start looking for the fissures? Rap/urban culture is as good a place as any. Plenty has been said by sociologists, feminists, concerned parents about the destructiveness generated by rap’s unsavoury image. Yes, it paints women as “ho’s”. Yes, it calls every man who attempts to be cultured a “faggot”. Yes, it glorifies alpha-male aggression (Monkey A would agree). But of all its “crimes”, the most heinous of which must be the murder of Romantic Love. The studio executive who coined the phrase “thug love” should be shot left, right and centre (if aggression is what he seeks).
What’s the big hoopla? you ask. It’s just music! I say: No, it’s not just music. If you listen to how the current pants-hanging-down-to-the-knees, gold chain-sporting, mother-this-and-that-effing generation going on about who they laid last night, you know it is praying at the altar of Eminem, Lil’ Wayne, Jay-Z, Ludacris and other such literary luminaries. Its truths, including that of Love, are defined by these men, who are artificial products of a dying music business which is grasping at straws to stay afloat. The rap/urban culture is an entrepreneurial scheme that has been designed to convince its followers of its streetwise “cred”, and this, most unfortunately, demands the sacrifice of Romantic Love.
You may not believe this, but there was a time, when most of you were foetuses, when black, yes black!, men could sing. And oh god, how they sang! When Peabo Bryson sang “If ever you're in my arms again/This time I'll love you much better/If ever you're in my arms again/This time I'll hold you forever/This time will never end,” my generation believed every word. Then there was that gorgeous black girl with a gorgeous voice to match, pre-drugs of course, who plucked at the heartstrings of every young lover with:
Though I’ve tried to resist
Being last on your list
But no other man’s gonna do
So I’m saving all my love for you!
Ah, what romance! What naivete! Of course, all this was an entrepreneurial scheme, too – but with a glaring difference. This scheme didn’t make us look at Love as if it’s a beast that might tear us in two. It didn’t tell us, to own Love, we would have to “get lowdown and dirty”. It instead made us fall in love in troves. It realised our dream of dancing in the arms of our lovers next to a candle-lit dinner table strewn with freshly-cut roses. It made us internalise the possibility, no matter how outlandish that possibility is, of everlasting love. The romanticising of Love, you insist, is just as fake as the “urbanising” of it. Those songs are just pure, unadulterated sap, bad for your teeth. That’s not what Love is in real life! Love in real life is rough; it pricks and makes you bleed. Point taken. Neither the romanticising nor the vulgarising (euphemism unnecessary) is what Love should be, that much is clear. But given that we are dealing with an abstract emotion that must find expression when the pressure is on, what other ways, apart from the two contrasting alternatives mentioned above, is the human psyche capable of devising? The intellectualising of it, as what I am attempting to do now? Or should we deify it, the way the Christian martyr Boethius did in Consolation of Philosophy? Speaking of the natural and human forces of the universe, he says they are “firmly bound by Love, which rules both earth and sea, and has its empire in the heavens too … By Love are peoples too kept bound together by a treaty which they may not break.” A little too metaphysical, too impersonal for my taste, and curiously smacking of the faux spirit of togetherness represented by the 1960s. No, even a saint’s words will not do. Love, for me, is a deeply personal manifestation. It flowers within me even when I have lost all hope in the world; it assures me that the hand which is holding mine may just be the one that will cure me of my fear of abandonment; it overcomes my fear of death and lets me know – even though the knowledge may be flawed – that there may just be meaning to my existence. Its roots may be biological (nature tells me to seek love so that I can reproduce), but its significance is transcendental.
That is why if my perception of Love is to be determined by a “trend”, I will gladly choose saccharinity over vulgarity. At least when things are excessively sweet, I will know there is goodness lodged in there somewhere. Goodness, I am sure even Boethius would agree, is what Love is all about.
Afterthought: If you are old enough to remember Saving All My Love For You, you may recognise the irony of my using it to exemplify Romantic Love. It is after all a song about adultery. And yes, who says sweetness cannot be found even there?
Lyrics:
Bad Romance. Composers: Stefani Germanotta, Nadir Khayat. Performed by Lady Gaga
If Ever You’re In My Arms Again. Composers: Michael Masser, Tom Snow, Cynthia Weil.
Performed by Peabo Bryson.
Saving All My Love For You. Composers: Gerry Goffin, Michael Masser. Performed by Whitney
Consulted website:
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