Monday 5/28/19
"There may be no higher compliment we can pay a person, or an artist, than to say that they love widely, deeply, truly.
"This is not the same as loving easily, nor blindly, as there is a searching, discerning quality involved in love that is actual, rather than the forced attempts at love where we pretend all is sunshine and light in max-areas of our lives, with people in our lives whom we may have assigned values based upon the titles of our relationships—spouse, child, partner, friend, sibling—so that we don’t have to stress that something that ought to be something—so we believe—maybe isn’t that thing at all.
"We have a hard time allowing to ourselves, “That we were born into the same family does not mean I love you (or that you love me), that we are putatively married for ten years now does not mean I still love you, that we have called ourselves friends for two decades does not mean we love each other.”
Love is harder than that. It is a perpetual active decision to be fully, bravely, open to someone or something. The person who truly loves, also knows when they do not love. And that’s okay, too. The more you love, the more things you will not love at all.
"What often develops with such a person, and such an artist—especially in our age of You-Must-Be-Chill—is a dispiriting irony in which those who talk about love far more than they live inside of it, will brand this kind of person a cynic, intense—big internet era no-no—and, the shock and horror: “judge-y.”
"The love of he or she who truly loves and who always looks for outlets for their love, is not applied easily, because it is precious. They sift through a lot of dreck to get to that which is worthy of their love. They look at more than other people do. They render themselves vulnerable with greater frequency. Often, the people who devalue love the most, by telling you that they experience it ceaselessly, everywhere, have no clue what to do with a person always on the lookout for that which, and whom, they will love next.
"This is why, when the person who stands accused of negativity is an artist, who knows the reality of what they are, what they are about, what they offer, that artist will respond with love; which is to say, more works of art, that might provide connective tissue, rather than another sally in the cause of further fragmentation.
"When you live this way, dross—both the slick, artless, hackneyed forms of bad books/films/music, and the people version—tends to get you down. You don’t so much as rail against them—for there is no need—as you do call them what they are, for which there is a great need. The need of reality. Reality has needs, too. The first is that it be acknowledged."
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