OK, Part 1 is here. I broke it up into two parts lest you look at the whole thing at once and let out a big, "Oh, HELL no." Here I take a peek at the song "Love to Be Loved" by Peter Gabriel and how it impacts/affects what I've talked about so far.
Ready? Here we go.
So, you know how people are
When it's all gone much too far
The way their minds are made
Still, there's something you should know
That I could not let show
That fear of letting go
One part of my direction of “Savage/Love” that I still quite like was one vignette where the actors stood in a diamond (think home plate, first, second, third, and please let’s not think about the Red Sox or I’ll cry), and each person was focused on one person in the diamond, oblivious to the focus of another person upon them. I liked the visual metaphor because it’s something you see all the time: the misdirection of an amazing amount of energy when it comes to our emotions. Person A wants Person B who wants Person C, and C doesn’t know B exists, and B cries on A’s shoulders about C. We’ve all seen it.
I love the notion that we’re possessed of a “fear of letting go” of desire, even if, as defined above, it’s a void. It’s not romance, it’s not love, it’s not even “like”. Those types of emotions require a two-way avenue. Desire, on the other hand, is a one-way street. Appropriate, in Boston, to have desire, since two-way roads are as common as unicorns in certain parts of town. And at the point of desire, it really has gone too far, unless by some miraculous event, reciprocation finally occurs. Usually that only happens in movies or sitcoms, though. In real life, Rachel woulda slapped a XXXXXXXX on Ross years ago. Most relationships which have an initial imbalance often get resolved pretty early on, when one person is still in “crush” phase. A “crush” is sorta like the farm team for “desire”. Eventually, if you work hard enough on a an unrequited crush, you get called up the Big Show. Of Pain.
And in this moment, I need to be needed
With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked
In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted
'Cause I love to be loved
I love to be loved
Yes, I love to be loved
Well, here’s Gabriel’s association with desire as a form of “darkness”, and I think that can be fairly apt in some cases, depending on the severity. And while you can look at the chorus as nothing more than a bit of lingual trickery, I personally like the readjustment of the position the narrator takes. One part of desire can be a consistent checking and rechecking of what it is you want out of person X. One day, you would happily settle for a cup of coffee. Other days, a phone call. Yet others, you find yourself picking out china patterns in Crate and Barrel. All in a week’s work.
The other element of this chorus that should be fairly obvious is the fascination with love itself, not the person whom you would have love you. Another reason I chose this song for the play: you can get so caught up in the romanticism of the pursuit that you forget there’s an actual person there as your supposed endgoal. And that’s why you, like so many fictional British men, often end up in a ditch at the end of the day. (Our modern day ditch might be the alley behind the bar at 2:30 am.)
There’s an incredible lack of specificity in this chorus, which I quite like. Normally I’m all about specificity in my lyrics (“Anna Begins”, “Green Eyes”, “Desolation Row”), but in this case, the abstractions I think work perfectly, since they ring true to real-life instances of desire. Go ahead, try to talk someone in its throes. Ask them for concrete examples of why So And So is so special. Watch them try and come up with reasons. They grasp at straws. Normally, it boils down to some variation of “Dunno, just got this…this feeling.” It’s why we stumble over words then, it’s why we stumble over words when we finally get up the guts to confront the object of affection: we as a species have had speech for thousands of years and yet have hardly scratched the surface of assigning mere words to our emotions.
I cry the way that babies cry
The way they can't deny
The way they feel
Words, they climb all over you
'Til they uncover you
From where you hide
Another notion of burying yourself in language to the point of being unintelligible. The best pop culture instance of this, of course, is the infamous “voice mail” scene in “Swingers”. It’s perfect not only from a Woody Allen-esque scene of bumbling male incompetence, but a great example of how words, at the most important times of our lives, often fail us. Desire has a way of making everything at times seem crystal clear to you, but simultaneously preventing from sharing said emotional clarity with those around us, and the locus of this desire above all.
In the end, though, usually you can break through the muck and state the incredibly complex in a very simple way, using clichés invented as shortcuts over our social history. Every once in a while, a new one (“You complete me” seems a likely candidate) enters the lexicon, but there are a few tried and true statements which, if not getting especially close to the complexities of your heart, suffice in conveying your overall intent.
I also really dig the first three lines of this verse, for reasons separate from the lingual issues above. We as maturing (or mature) people hate the screaming kid in the airplane, the restaurant, the supermarket, but often times wish we didn’t have to hide our emotions the way we do. Sometimes it’d feel good to vent, on the spot, when you wanted to vent. Have a good shout. Have a good cry. Whatever the case may be. Desire, on the other hand, forces us against our will to break down those barriers built up over the years, and, in effect, returns you to that stage of unable to not express what you feel, when you feel it.
So much emphasis is placed on what we think, not what we feel. No one ever gave a promotion to person who was really, really in touch with his feelings. You can’t operate PowerPoint through empathy. Desire is a seductive way for us as feeling, not thinking, people to get in touch with a side that’s usually asked to be ignored. “Reason” has no place on this side. “Common sense” is also usually banned. Which is why we are usually asked, “What in the hell are you THINKING?” when desire makes us do something considered, by a rational world, to be utterly moronic. Well, we weren’t thinking. That’s the freakin’ point. We were feeling, and sometimes, that gets us in a lot of trouble.
Worse, often, for the hyper-rational person in the throes of desire. Because you are consciously aware of the duplicity of your actions, and as such, it’s hard to really enjoy any part of desire, because you’re aware of the potential (and often inevitable) downside to said desire. You don’t even get to enjoy the early-stage “fun” part of desire, when you slip over from crushdom into a collision course with reality at some point in the far off future, far off enough that you don’t even need to worry about wearing a seat belt just yet. Impact is miles off. Right then, you’re enjoying the open road, going 15 miles over the speed limit. If you’re cursed with an overactive mind, however, even at this stage you’re looking in your rear-view mirror for the cops.
And that, ladies in gentleman, is more thought put into that particular verse than anyone in the History of Man has ever, ever done. Hold your golf claps to the end, though, we’re almost done. I promise.
This old familiar craving
I've been here before, this way of behaving
Don't know who the hell I'm saving anymore
Let it pass let it go let it leave
From the deepest place I grieve
This time I believe
And here’s a kicker for ya. This bridge speaks, at least to me, of someone who’s been down this path before, got kicked in the teeth, left in a ditch with their married cousin humping her guy right next to you, and yet you still believe that this one, THIS ONE IS THE ONE. A noble, and often foolish, optimism. Then again, if you’re enough of a romantic to get lost in desire in the first place, well, you’re more than likely to try it again. I think the definition of optimism is someone who does the same thing over and over again and expects the same results.
Oh wait, that’s the definition of “insanity”. My bad.
Seriously, though, to the outside observer, the line between the insane and the romantic optimist can seem like a very thin one indeed. (Hell, look at me, I used this song to set the tone for a play called “Savage/Love”, and I wondered why I wasn’t getting any dates at the time.)
And I let go
I can let go of it
Though it takes all the strength in me
And all the world can see
I'm losing such a central part of me
I can let go of it
You know I mean it
You know that I mean it
I recognize how much I've lost
But I cannot face the cost
'Cause I love to be loved
Most of how you take this song, should you ever look it up or buy the record, depends on how much you believe that the narrator actually “can let go of it”. After all, the song concludes lyrically the same as the first chorus, which would indicate very little has been learned, per say.
I guess, though, that the lesson of “never trying again” can’t be learned by this narrator, or any hard-core romantic in general. We just don’t have it in us to flat out give up the overall pursuit. Too ingrained in our nature. The only way I can see this verse working is to assume that the narrator has managed to get over the fact that desire, by its definition, cannot be fulfilled. To have it fulfilled is to transform it into something else. That’s, of course, the happy end, where desire transforms into the two-way street of love, sloppy makeouts, you know, whatever. The other option is to be in the constant state of desire: to always be unfulfilled. And like, that sucks, dude.
So what’s to be done? Well, in this case, moving on. Realizing that this particular form/object of desire is in the end more destructive that constructive. And while this person is not giving hope later of future romantic pursuits, he/she realizes that it won’t be necessarily as easier road. At least, that’s what I read in the “…I cannot face the cost” line.
It’s a “central part” of this person, this capacity to fall prey to such desire. They aren’t masochists, per say, though outside observers wouldn’t be frowned upon for laying such a label upon them. Some people are wired certain ways, that’s all. NO harm, no foul. I mean, some people like pork. Some people like the Utah Jazz. And others are easily susceptible to potentially destructive romantic inclinations. (Little know fact: the genes for all three are located on the fourth chromosome. That’s your biology lesson for the day.)
Maybe someday there will be telethons for such people, but in the meantime, just treat ‘em good. They are your friends, neighbors, co-workers. They serve you coffee in the morning, and occasionally, they are the ones mugging you at a late-night ATM. Sometimes they write blogs that you read. They’re good people, all.
(Well, like, except for the muggers, of course. Poo on them.)