Saturday 3 December 2016

# 43: LOVE: 'a fine madness'












Madly in love, Crazy about you, mad about you,
driving me nuts. 

All metaphors for being in love,
yet perhaps with a literal grain of truth. Somewhere
in there is a recognition that new lovers lose touch
with reality when falling in love; or in the first flush,
people often behave as though they were hypomanic,
so perhaps they are: maybe there is a degree of
crossover into the shallows of insanity, that people
acknowledge when they say “I’m not myself”, “I’m
losing it”, “This is insane”, “I’m not my own man
anymore”. It’s not just this self-description as being
a little mad, there are other telling symptoms: euphoria
(“I couldn’t be happier”), boundless optimism, even in
the face of difficulties (“love will find a way”); great
confidence, articulacy (to anyone who’ll listen).
The person becomes more extrovert, charming and
attractive to others. True that they become somewhat
obsessive about the love-object, working their name
 into every conversation, and their picture of them gets
somewhat distorted (She’s just the most beautiful
woman I’ve ever seen; and she is The Only One for me).
Even making this judgement serially in successive
relationships doesn’t seem to appear as a contradiction!





Most relationships last a little longer than this one. If the relationship falters, if the gloss has come off it and cracks appear, there is a sense of disappointment that the person no longer measures up to the idealised fantasy image that had been projected onto them by the other: a little unfair. Not their fault that the eye of the beholder had conjured up this paragon that no real person could possibly be. 

One symptom of this is irritation at the other’s annoyance value. The interesting little idiosyncrasies (or so they appeared in the first six months) have become irritants, and sometimes eventual deal-breakers, so far have they gotten under the skin. The disappointment is blamed on the other and resentments accumulate, rows develop and then it is just a matter of time. The break-up, followed by bitterness and sadness reverses all the positive mood states of the first few months and depression may set in. In other words, over the course of the relationship the person’s behaviour will have exhibited all the features (in miniature) of a bi-polar (formerly manic-depressive) episode, albeit at a lower level. Therapy may be achieved at Starbucks, the pub, or Guardian Soulmates rather than the psychiatric wing, but given the overlap of symptoms, be careful what you wish for: madly in love is a two-edged sword. I am not anti-love or anti-romantic, quite the opposite. Despite constant practice and conscientious effort, it just doesn't seem to be part of my skill-set (violins).

I’m not saying that we’re mad to fall in love: I’m saying that in love we often behave madly, almost as madly as someone in the early stages of a serious mental illness. Being in love is great – mostly – but there are dangers: you may get sex or you may get Sectioned.





Do they? Yes, they do attract but this is not usually the stuff of enduring long-term relationships. It's really a practical matter. If the couple have opposite political views, this last year must have been a tough time for them. First Brexit then Trump: much frowning over the cornflakes, maybe some rows, maybe even a divergence of social life: "Oh you go to the pub with them I'd rather watch Casualty than listen to Tony doing his Nigel Farage bit".

The attraction of opposites can be very potent, sometimes sexually stimulating but maybe because it's a novelty. But novelty always wears off, eventually. Then what are they left with? The fact that they actually have very little in common.

All the research shows that it is similarity rather than difference that binds couples together in the long term. You don't really want to have arguments all the time, do you? It's more pleasant to be confirmed in your views than constantly contradicted. And the similarity factor applies to other dimensions, too: tastes in food, music, clothes, movies, you name it. Even similarity in physical appearance can play a part, and for every tall bloke with a very short woman, there's an identikit couple who dress the same and share some facial features. Narcissism, I call it.







I have to dispatch:
Saccharin-sweet depictions of love
which make a cocktail of Golden
Syrup, icing sugar and glacé cherries
taste sour by comparison.

In the case of this example, you have
to ask whether it will be such
a wonderful Year, with pinhole
navels but no nipples or genitals.
Peeing will be a problem, let alone
sex. Also not such a good idea to
depict them as married. They are well
under-age and look like brother and
sister. It's a double whammy which
 is a poor role-model for children.









Actually, music is much more about 'lost love' than the moon-in-June bit, proportionally. But the choice is totally defeating because 'Love' dominates about 90% of all recorded music. At the moment I can only think of Benny Hill's 'Ernie- the fastest milkman in the West' as falling outside that category but knowing his proclivity for chasing busty girls with criminally-short shorts, there was doubtless a lot of love-related innuendo in that, too. How come he was so popular in the States? Was Trump addicted to his shows at an impressionable age. I shall have to leave these questions to other scholars. So I've just picked some random love-songs, not because they're representative, but because they're great.





BILLIE HOLLIDAY:  ALL OF ME







ELLA FITZGERALD:  BUT NOT FOR ME






GEORGE HARRISON: SOMETHING




JONI MITCHELL:  RIVER











PHILIP LARKIN:                                                                      


The difficult part of Love 
Is being selfish enough,                                                                            
Is having the blind persistence
To upset someone's existence
Just for your own sake:
What cheek it must take.

And then there's the unselfish side,
Who can be satisfied
Putting someone else first
So that you come off worst.
My life s for me
As well deny gravity.

Yet, vicious or virtuous,
Love still suits most of us;
Only the bleeder who
Can't manage either view
Is ever wholly rebuffed
And he can get stuffed


PATTI SMITH:










“Who, being loved, is poor?”    Oscar Wilde


“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” – Charles M. Schulz

“Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in my bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.” 
― Woody Allen

I was married by a judge: I should have asked for a jury.    – Groucho Marx
Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse. 

































Here's a soundtrack from Dire Straits





















Undecided whether to see 'Allied' or 'Sully' at the cinema on Friday night. Didn't know that much about either. Decided against Allied on the grounds that a schlocky and passionate romance in a budget carpet store might be a bit tacky or generate too much static*. Sully turned out to be very good (directed by Clint Eastwood, a man who has made a great deal of money modelling himself on me), it's the story of the internal American flight which landed in (correction: 'on') the Hudson River when it lost all power, due to an inadvisable intake of birds to the engines (NB: no birds were hurt in the making of this film). There was no violence and no sex, 
but, I imagine, a fair bit of unobtrusive CGI. There are dream sequences involving an aircraft crashing in amongst the tall buildings of NYC, (uncomfortable shades of 9/11) which I'm sure we would have heard about if it were not cooked up on the computers. Tom Hanks is great as the pilot, although if there was a control marked 'noble-ness' I would have turned it one notch anti-clockwise. Worth an Oscar nomination, probably not quite the gong. The whole is thoroughly entertaining (not something usually associated with air-crashes) and strongly recommended. One snag: you may decide never to fly again.

*I'm sure it's a fine film really, and to Allied Carpets: my felicitations, your Berbers are unsurpassed, and there's no point in suing people with no money. Also Warner Bros, it was just a little gag. Sorry.















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