Call me dark, tragic, whatever, but there is no love without death. Remove the horizon of dying, horizon of end, horizon of once and never again and you can be sure you buried every possibility to love. I don’t know what love is. But I see wrinkles around her eyes, hair falling on her shoulders, I stare at the knuckles on her hand, feel her ribs under my fingertips, the ways skin stretches and folds as I pass my lips over it, the shape of her skull and suddenly I realize how she happens, how she appears in just one angle – the eternity that will never come again. The moment, the molecules, the voice which you can never grasp, grab, preserve, return to, and at the same time they carry something so immense and neverending. Isn’t it what dying is about? The point in time and space where time and space collapse, the joint which disjoints, the now which is forever and never. If we were immortal we wouldn’t love.
I wrote ‘Lovers’ many moons ago, wanting to approach the reality of love starting from the instinct I just described. But it’s much more – and much less – than a love song. I intersected it with the ways I was failing at it, the ways I was forgetting, the ways she was.
Not a sensation, not an emotion, not a decision or a choice. Love is, before all, a state of mind. A continuous, permanent perception. The ability to see the other thrown into a void of ephemeral, passing mystery of who she is, of who I am, and never in any other way. Doesn’t matter if she’s buying new shoes, licking icecream or making love to you. She is peeling a peanut or taking a piss and it has unreachable, reverential proportions. Beauty of which never dies, but grows as we dare to die.
Lyrics:
Lovers
Baby I’m coming to you
To your love that never knew
It’s dying we are living through
All is built to be pulled down
And I know in the last round
I’ll fall for my tricks too
Baby I’m coming to you
But I’m long stuck in a queue
To have it more and have it all
And I hunted your face
And I shot you in place
You made no sound, I left you sprawled
There’s a whisper in the noise
I can’t leave it be
I practice slavery of the choice
It feels so free
What to do my pretty one
When all the love of years begone
Knows just shit of who am I
And on it crucified
And in the search for sky
It’s my tears I’m blinded by
I tried to break through velvet nights
Through the skin, beyond the sight
Tear the patchwork, understand
But none did ever stay
Who’d die to tread a way
From your sheets to promised land
There’s a whisper in the noise
I can’t leave it be
I practice slavery of the choice
It feels, it tastes so free
Words that pass and words so cool
Are just re-living me
Shiny, loud, they ridicule
They chew and spit me.
“Not a sensation, not an emotion, not a decision or a choice. Love is, before all, a state of mind. A continuous, permanent perception”
Exactly! Although I never thought of the death element, but I’m glad that you’ve put it into my head…now I have something to ponder on my drive home.