My definition of Modern L-O-V-E
ME Against the World
Modern Love.
W-T-F is it?
I mean with all this recorded history behind us, there really is no DEFINITIVE meaning of the word love. And I’m not talking of the Merriam-Webster kind. The never ending pursuit of trying to pin down the ghost of love has always shaped our culture and experiences. Yet it remains abstract in definition. But I will settle that once and for all. I can hear your doubt as I type this, calling my attempt futile. Watch the magic happen, if you are bold enough to read on for I will finally and unequivocally define a framework for love. ONE, more importantly, that we can all embrace and will be entirely and utterly original.
For this exercise, I will channel two great writers. Mark Twain and David Bowie. (Indulge me eye rollers.)
Twain, the proverbial master of maxims is attributed, in 1874 to have written that “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”
Whoa. Deep. In other words (not necessarily his), “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”.
Okay, I can buy that.
Did you ever hear the song “Modern Love” by David Bowie? Back in 1983, when it came out — I was in my pubescent pre-adolescent prime and I vividly recall how that song formed my early notions of what “love” was/ is/ could be. It came out when music videos mattered. Bowie was on a roll back then with his album “Let’s Dance. Legendary stuff. That song, like Twain’s quote above, also waxed on histories unrelenting tendency to repeat itself.
MODERN LOVE:
I catch a paper boy
But things don’t really change
I’m standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye
But I try
I try
There’s no sign of life
It’s just the power to charm
I’m lying in the rain
But I never wave bye-bye
But I try
I try
Never gonna fall for
(Modern love)
Walks beside me
(Modern love)
Walks on by
(Modern love)
Gets me to the church on time
(Church on time)
Terrifies me
(Church on time)
Makes me party
(Church on time)
Puts my trust in God and man
(God and man)
No confessions
(God and man)
No religion
(God and man)
Don’t believe in Modern love
Great song and sound. But even then, at 11 years old I recall thinking “FUK… that’s depressing. I mean? Is love (welp*) really — That?”
“Nahhhhh? Yeahhhhhhh! Whatever.”
I figured, Bowie’s whole “cynical” disposition and vibe was the byproduct of being an alien sex stud. Sooooo, of course love sucks for him. Rock n’ Roll apathy; it is part of the gig. “Look at all the freaks he was banging — ” I thought, “he can not possibly be lonely though. Right?”
Love and all of its mystery, this is our generational curse where we all are set up to eventually be disappointed with heartbreak. It all repeats itself. You are doomed.
Is that what Twain and Bowie are telling us?
Was Bowie a mere mortal, like you and me — possibly another victim of our collective doomed destiny of an encounter between adolescence and notions of Love? After All, he was born in 1947. The bohemian “free-love” movement, or the “Hippie” movement is attributed to have started in the late 50’s to mid 1960’s. Eureka! This puts Bowie squarely in a zone in his life where he was, perhaps weak and easily “impressionable” to be shaped by that time’s definition of love. Free-love.
What was the “free-love” movement? You can look it up yourself, but the famous modern instance in history that shaped the 1960’s proclaimed that you need not be attached to traditional institutions like marriage because they don’t necessarily work. So go ahead, and fuck freely.
While there was a ton of other utopian and well-intended notions in the movement about inclusiveness, drugs and diversity, there were also healthy doses of cynicism. Especially on the core fixation of narrowly defining L-O-V-E in its sexual form. Like Bowie’s lyrics, they questioned what was the sense in that “old-timey” construct.
Love? Cupid? Meh.
It’s just gonna get you to hurry up to the altar. Get you to the church on time to get married off to live an obsolete Leave it to Beaver life.
Perhaps that is where free-love went wrong. Why make “sex” the primary notion of LOVE in the first place?? I mean, I love sex — we all do. It is an essential and healthful component of our connection to ourselves and most significant relationships. But it is just that, a component, essential yes, but designed for the purpose of making more of us. But for anyone who knows LOVE, real love, you know there are far more dimensions that are not sexual at all. And that is why I believe we need to challenge this cycle…change the rhyme pattern in history. Re-write the definition. Because if we can, I predict that we can set ourselves upon a path for a new love movement. Our version of our… “hippie/ free-love” or whatever you want to call it thing. Because I believe it is time.
MODERN LOVE, according to the Marc Ecko dictionary of awesomeness, is the celebration of people’s free will to unconditionally relish and delight in the things that define one’s world.
MODERN LOVE is “the world to you”. For me…it’s my wife and kids and all my time with them. It is my ability to have the free will to create the things that shape a world for me and my family. Take these things away from me and you take away my entire world. You take away my ability to love. Nothing else on the planet matters without my ability to love what I choose too.
In my definition of MODERN LOVE, we should allow people to have their world.
MODERN LOVE is NOT being so steely cool and obstinate, that your default position is to “put up your guards”.
“Guards up! Don’t let ’em see you love!” We have been deceived to believe that we are somehow weak by having a loving disposition publicly.
Love, we have been told makes you vulnerable.
I say bullshit.
MODERN LOVE allows people to delight in that in which they define as their world without the interference in their ability to do so.
MODERN LOVE can not be imposed. We have an obligation to create a new MODERN LOVE that shapes a world wherein we don’t become another cliche “previous generation”, who goes ahead and makes a complete and utter fucking mess for our kids to contend with.
In order to prescribe to this definition of MODERN LOVE one must agree that you can have yours as long as you don’t tell me I can’t have mine.
To me, this is MODERN LOVE.
MODERN LOVE is R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Oh wait, isn’t that an Aretha Franklin song? I guess I am not so original afterall.
Twain was right.
One Love,
