I do not profess to know much about love, and certainly not much that would be useful to anyone else,* but I am all for it (in the cosmic finding of home sense, the joyful gladdening sense, the maddening sense, the hopeless devotion sense, the love of peanut butter sense, and so on), all for the expressing of it in some form or another, and I think some of it’s commercial trappings are charming. I like hearts and flowers, and I like the word love, and would not mind wearing it on a necklace (umm…I just got a necklace like this) or having it printed on a T-shirt or some such thing. That can be appealing to me in regulated doses. I bought these conversations hearts, which have pleasant childhood nostalgia for me. My heart is romantic. I like attention, too. Well, certain kinds.
*If you love me, you know I am not being modest here…I am often not even especially nice. If I love you, may the universe have mercy on you.
That said, Valentine’s Day doesn’t do much for me, regardless of whether I have a Valentine or not. [Not since it became suddenly uncool to give little valentine’s cards in elementary school, which I really did like, and did with great care (I still have some of the earliest batches I received, when the spelling was shaky and the messages especially earnest and loving). I still like vintage Valentine’s cards.] I can get behind the concept but even if I did have a Valentine (which I don’t, as it happens, in part due to being wary, particular, and unwilling to tolerate anyone in my space/time for long, in part—like so many things—due to chance), I suspect I would still think it was kind of hollow, at least on its (non-personalized) cultural surface. Holidays tend to irritate me, anyhow. I don’t like being told what to do, nor being given a deadline by which to do it. Sometimes, admittedly, they are a convenient excuse to give a gift I have wanted to give yet somehow lack the status to give freely.
[Gifts are strange, are they not? Highly recommend The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, by the way.]
I think this day is going to be a dud until there are children to exchange cards with again.
Andre 3000 sums up the issue nicely. Let’s all just take a moment to remember how incredible The Love Below album is, and this song in particular.
I like this ominous cupid character, “Well keep on runnin’ playa. Cuz I got my gooood shoes on. And I got ’em tied up tight. And you gon’ find out. TONIGHT.”
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