What is Love?
Is it baby don't hurt me — or something else?
Reading time: 3 minutes.
Happy Valentine’s Day, folks.
A few weeks ago, a close friend came by for dinner to lament about his recent break-up. We ate, we drank, we talked, and at the end I bestowed upon him a few books on love I’ve read in recent years.
They helped me through my own break-ups, and I hope they might help him as well. We’ll see if he actually reads them.
A couple years ago, in another life when I was working at Politico and being very active on Twitter, I compiled some of my literary learnings in a short thread on love.
Here is that thread — followed as always by an artwork I’ve recently enjoyed and a list of cultural recommendations.
What is love?
At first, I went back to basics.
Sappho, whom the Greeks consider their greatest lyric poet, wrote about the beauty and pain of love. She originated the term “bittersweet,” giving a name to this ever-present duality and unknowingly making way for years of modern-day research and an ever growing number of romantic comedies that play on this duality.
Love — or eros, as the ancient Greeks called it, is desire. And therefore, it’s also 𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸. “Who ever desires what is not gone?” the classicist Anne Carson asks. “No one. The Greeks were clear on this. They invented eros to express it.”
Carson wrote a book about the bittersweet, about the human experience of love. Love (or eros) represents a void. Something’s missing. The lover wants the beloved — so they long, they hope, they fantasize about what could be.
The sweetness of erotic love is followed by the bitterness of longing. If your beloved is not there, you long for them. If your beloved is right next to you, the sadness comes from knowing it could one day end, and hoping it lasts forever with every bone in your body.
And therein, my fellow humans, lies the definition of eros. Eros is the distance between what exists and what could be — what you have, versus what you want to have. The desire. “Beauty spins, and the mind moves.”
She talks about why we love falling in love: “To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful. A suspended moment of living hope.” There is joy in pursuing the object of one's desire. We become better versions of ourselves when caring for another.
And when it ends, there’s sadness.
But there’s also the lingering beauty of having cared. Regardless of the outcome, we are changed because we let ourselves love. We let ourselves hope, and that’s a beautiful, rewarding thing.
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear friends.
Piece of the week
This 2006 work by American artist Mickalene Thomas is called “Never change lovers in the middle of the night,” presumably after the Boney M song of the same name. The museum description says it portrays “two women wrestling.”
I love the dynamism conferred by the picture’s capture of a single moment in time, as opposed to having the two characters pose. Seeing it in person, I was also mesmerized by how the glitter placement accentuates the bare skin.
I saw this piece as part of “When We See Us: A century of Black figuration,” a fantastic show that opened at the Bozar last week. Alexia Struye, an Antwerp-based artist and art world mentor to yours truly, wrote a great break-down here, on what makes this exhibit so good and important.
What’s going on?
This weekend:
The Bright Festival is back, you can head to a few different spots in Brussels for some (usually great) light shows. You can find the full map here.
Bozar is hosting a ‘club night’ tomorrow evening, with a DJ
The Flagey Piano days are back with performances through Sunday.
New gallery shows:
Fondation CAB, near Flagey, is presenting a show of works by Flemish artist Kasper Bosmans (If you went to see the ‘Love is Lounder’ show at Bozar last year, he was behind the cherry blossoms in the first room)
Augusta Gallery at Sablon just unveiled a new show focusing on sustainable designs that repurpose old tennis balls and discarded wood that looks much cooler than I’m making it sound
Peter Gaugy Gallery in Saint Gilles also just opened a new group show, combining the works of a few international artists.
What else?
James Blunt is apparently gonna perform in Forest on February 18th
An orchestra will perform the score of ‘The Truman Show’ as the movie plays on a screen, next weekend at Flagey
Have a wonderful weekend everyone,
Ana
Honoured!