"At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going." Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary (1998)

Modern Romance

"don't hold on, go get strong, well don't you know? there is no modern romance."

This song has been the soundtrack of my walks around the city lately. Spring is coming, romance blooms, couples hold hands walking along the lake and I feel a bit like Bridget Jones. I have claimed lately that I will never love again, that romance seems disgusting, that I don't buy love and romance and etc. I have found myself annoyed by people who have been rubbing their "eternal, unconditional love" in my face (and ears).

And I quoted this song again, because this is how I felt. But I didn't give much thought to these words until someone pointed out to me: "but there is modern romance".

I denied what he said but soon realized that my arguments were a mere product of my frustration. And then he quoted Rilke: "It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work which all other work is merely preparation"

With these words I remembered something that I had forgotten. While all this time I am being bitter and rejecting those who want to show the world how much they love each other, I am forgetting something very important. With another failure I gained something. I took a step further into this ultimate task of learning how to love someone else, how to build something real with someone else. How to be myself with someone, instead of merging and smothering each other and calling it love.

And then, more words of wisdom from Rilke: "Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough."

I remember now what should have been obvious for many months already. And I remember too that if there is something that I like more than the song "Modern Romance", it is the hidden track after it, that says:

Baby I'm afraid of a lot of things
But
I ain't scared of lovin' you
Baby I know your afraid of a lot of things
But
Don't be scared of love

Cause
People will say all kinds of thing
That don't mean a damn to me
Cause all I see
Is whats in front of me
And that's you

Well, I've been dragged all over the place
I've taken hits time just don't erase
And baby i can see you've been fucked with too
But that don't mean your lovin' days are through

Cause people will say all kinds of things
That don't mean a damn to me
Cause all I see
Is whats in front of me
And that's you

Well I maybe just be a fool
But I know you're just as cool
And cool kids
They belong together


No further comments.

Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais

Scene for the screenplay that I will write someday:

Music for the scene:

A woman is standing in a living room. The sun comes in through a large window, the lights are off. She puts on a long black coat. Close up to her face. A tear falls down her cheek, and she wipes it off with her hand. She walks to a table with an old record player on top. Close up to the needle of the player hitting the record that reads "Serge Gainsbourg, Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais". She walks to the door, where there is a bag and her purse. She takes both and walks out the door.

Close up of the record turning as the song plays.

A door opens and closes. A man stands next to the table with the old record player. He follows the motion of the record as the song repeats itself over and over again. Close up to his face. A tear falls down his cheek and he wipes it off with his hand.

As the song plays, zoom it to the man's face, while the woman whispers in his ear "I just came to tell you that I'm going, and all your tears won't change anything"

End of Scene.