relationshipsThoughts after reading some of Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." Contains mild profanity.
Chuck Klosterman posits, in his essay, "This Is Emo," that it's impossible to ever be satisfied with a relationship. Why? Because we see happy relationships in the stories, in most of the romantic comedies and love songs that are widespread through our culture. And we want the same thing in our lives. He declares, "whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living."
He then proceeds to blame the entire problem, humorously, on John Cusack. Superficially, on the notion that, "every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake" with Mr. Cusack. Initially, I'd misremembered this quote as being "every straight girl in America," and considered this a gross generalization. I've been labeled as representing the all-American girl for years, and I have the opinion that John Cusack's roles invariably seem to represent a whiny guy who's not doing much with his life and can't hold a relationship together. However, being only straight, and not in fact an acquaintance of Mr. Klosterman's, his statement could still be considered accurate.
This comes up again later. Klosterman describes a ploy of his for the second date with a girl, when he'll ask her what religion she follows.
'Invariably, she will say something like, "Oh, I'm sort of Catholic,
but I'm pretty lapsed in my participation," or, "I'm kind of Jewish,
but I don't really practice anymore." Virtually everyone
under the age of thirty will answer that question in this manner.'
I considered this statement, and then I mentally looked around at the friends I hang out with. The vast majority of them are between 20 and 27, and with five notable exceptions, they're very solid about what they believe. Actually, with most of them, you wouldn't need to ask on the second date - they would have told you before the first. The problem with Mr. Klosterman's phrase of "virtually everyone under the age of thirty," is that his sample group is apparently limited to the people he's dating.
This kind of makes sense, because if he's this half-assed about what he believes, I'm rather certain that nobody who's firm about their religion would want to date him.
But, back to this business of pursuing relationship satisfaction.
Klosterman describes a concept of "fake love," and slides into holding up Coldplay on a pedestal, the base of which he currently uses to beat his forehead. "That sleepy-eyed bozo," referring to Chris Martin as he performs Coldplay's "Yellow," "isn't even making sense. He's just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love." He's not exactly whining, just building for his point later. "Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real."
The rest of "This Is Emo," simply further develops the idea of "fake love;" where we got it, why we can't find it, and why we want it so bad. The two-dimensional happiness that exists in our fiction-media looks and sounds real, and must have been attainable for those people (the movie characters, or the songwriters). If it looks so good and sounds so good, and we know people have gotten it, we want it, too. And of course, we can't find it, so we're never really satisfied in relationships.
Klosterman's wrong, but only because he stops too soon. Agreed, the two-dimensional fake love isn't what we do in our lives. He's got the right focal point, but the wrong angle. He claims that the problem is that we're trying for this ideal, and we can't attain it.
Fake love isn't the ideal. It's just like he said, a two-dimensional version of the real thing. It's not the pinnacle to try to achieve. It's about as comparable as having a photo of your best friend instead of the real thing. Looks like your friend. Reminds you of your friend. Absolutely freakin' terrible at playing frisbee. That's what fake love is.
And it's not a bad thing. Dude, I DON'T have a photo of me and my best friend. Kind of wish I did, because I don't see him a lot. It's cool to have some kind of reminder when your friend/love isn't around, or to pick it up later and smile about it when he/she/it/whatever is. But, dude, love? Real love? You aren't going to get that in a song. Not the lasting kind. The lasting kind has to put up with all KINDS of junk.
Getting home at 11 at night from work, exhausted, and still having to go out and shovel because one of you has to do it to get the cars out in the morning. Recognizing that she's upset because she's not as physically pretty as a 20-year-old, AND she feels like you'd like her better if she was. Holding your smart thoughts in when you're both mad and tired and frustrated. Working all the time because to you, love means taking care of her, but to her, it's abandonment because taking care of her means spending time with her. Not understanding your kids, and being frustrated at the choices they're making. Having to choose between paying the rent and paying the car insurance this month. Her mom. Your mom. Feeling like you don't measure up in her book, but in another girl's eyes you're amazing, but ignoring that and still going back to her every night. Still letting him know that you respect him when you think he's being a doofus (trust me, these are not mutually exclusive).
Weirdly, love, a lot of the time, means acting like you love the person when you don't feel love. And that's not something you can put in a two-hour movie, or a song. It probably isn't something you can put in words at all - it's just something you can feel. When for the fifth time this week your son's wet the bed, and one of you has to get up at three a.m. to take care of it, and you both have to be up at six for work, and you sigh and take it. Because you don't feel love then. You just feel frustration, and exhaustion, and you just try to say as little as possible because you don't feel an overwhelming sense of love for your wife or your son, but you still don't want to say anything that would hurt either of them later (like, in the morning, when they'll both remember it and you won't). You don't think about why. You don't feel like doing it. But you do.
It's weird. Really weird. But pursuing that through all of the mundane - making the choices that spell love even when you don't feel it - it takes awhile to get to what's beyond the fake love. I don't aim for spending time with my friend's photo - I want to hang out with him. You're not shooting for the fake love, because you know it isn't real, but you don't know what else there is. You just know, kind of, maybe, hope anyway, that there's something after all this.
And there is. But it's hard to put the value of it into words. It's a different kind of adventure. It's a different kind of intensity - a softer intensity, maybe. There are things in the world that grow like love does, but I don't know what they are. Trees, maybe - you can't get a solid climbing tree in five years. I guess.. it's not something boring, might be closer to what I'm trying to say. All the crazy, frustrating adventures, sometimes four decades' worth or more, has taught you whether or not you can depend on each other. Whether the lines you're using for your climbing harness are going to hold you, or where not to use them.
That's a decent comparison. When you're still uncertain about your equipment, you don't put it to the test on anything where you're going to get seriously hurt or killed if it fails. You do small climbs, work on different challenges. You can't take the big adventures until you know that your partner's going to be there through the whole thing.
If you aim for the fake love Klosterman talks about, you're going to be disappointed even if you get it. It's hard to get to, because life events tangle it up. But, man, you get there, and then what? It's flat. It's happy, but it's flat. The adventure's gone. You're not SUPPOSED to get there; it's a story. It's a picture. Like Cinderella - when they say "happily ever after," you know life is not a smooth cruise of bliss. They're not saying this life is; Cinderella's just a story. The fierce love that hangs on through bumps off course and flagging emotions and crap you never wanted in your life but hell you got it anyway so you're gonna grit your teeth and get through it...you can't put that in fake love. You can't put that in a four-minute song, or a two-hour movie. You can't have someone tell you about it. You're going to have to be in it before you recognize it, and like rafting crazy rapids, you're going to be too busy trying to keep things together to recognize anything. So, you'll probably only know it after it comes. And then you'll be glad you stuck it out.
And then, after that, you'll have to ask yourself why you're listening to ME about this, because I'm not yet thirty. :)
Chuck Klosterman posits, in his essay, "This Is Emo," that it's impossible to ever be satisfied with a relationship. Why? Because we see happy relationships in the stories, in most of the romantic comedies and love songs that are widespread through our culture. And we want the same thing in our lives. He declares, "whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living."
He then proceeds to blame the entire problem, humorously, on John Cusack. Superficially, on the notion that, "every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake" with Mr. Cusack. Initially, I'd misremembered this quote as being "every straight girl in America," and considered this a gross generalization. I've been labeled as representing the all-American girl for years, and I have the opinion that John Cusack's roles invariably seem to represent a whiny guy who's not doing much with his life and can't hold a relationship together. However, being only straight, and not in fact an acquaintance of Mr. Klosterman's, his statement could still be considered accurate.
This comes up again later. Klosterman describes a ploy of his for the second date with a girl, when he'll ask her what religion she follows.
'Invariably, she will say something like, "Oh, I'm sort of Catholic,
but I'm pretty lapsed in my participation," or, "I'm kind of Jewish,
but I don't really practice anymore." Virtually everyone
under the age of thirty will answer that question in this manner.'
I considered this statement, and then I mentally looked around at the friends I hang out with. The vast majority of them are between 20 and 27, and with five notable exceptions, they're very solid about what they believe. Actually, with most of them, you wouldn't need to ask on the second date - they would have told you before the first. The problem with Mr. Klosterman's phrase of "virtually everyone under the age of thirty," is that his sample group is apparently limited to the people he's dating.
This kind of makes sense, because if he's this half-assed about what he believes, I'm rather certain that nobody who's firm about their religion would want to date him.
But, back to this business of pursuing relationship satisfaction.
Klosterman describes a concept of "fake love," and slides into holding up Coldplay on a pedestal, the base of which he currently uses to beat his forehead. "That sleepy-eyed bozo," referring to Chris Martin as he performs Coldplay's "Yellow," "isn't even making sense. He's just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love." He's not exactly whining, just building for his point later. "Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real."
The rest of "This Is Emo," simply further develops the idea of "fake love;" where we got it, why we can't find it, and why we want it so bad. The two-dimensional happiness that exists in our fiction-media looks and sounds real, and must have been attainable for those people (the movie characters, or the songwriters). If it looks so good and sounds so good, and we know people have gotten it, we want it, too. And of course, we can't find it, so we're never really satisfied in relationships.
Klosterman's wrong, but only because he stops too soon. Agreed, the two-dimensional fake love isn't what we do in our lives. He's got the right focal point, but the wrong angle. He claims that the problem is that we're trying for this ideal, and we can't attain it.
Fake love isn't the ideal. It's just like he said, a two-dimensional version of the real thing. It's not the pinnacle to try to achieve. It's about as comparable as having a photo of your best friend instead of the real thing. Looks like your friend. Reminds you of your friend. Absolutely freakin' terrible at playing frisbee. That's what fake love is.
And it's not a bad thing. Dude, I DON'T have a photo of me and my best friend. Kind of wish I did, because I don't see him a lot. It's cool to have some kind of reminder when your friend/love isn't around, or to pick it up later and smile about it when he/she/it/whatever is. But, dude, love? Real love? You aren't going to get that in a song. Not the lasting kind. The lasting kind has to put up with all KINDS of junk.
Getting home at 11 at night from work, exhausted, and still having to go out and shovel because one of you has to do it to get the cars out in the morning. Recognizing that she's upset because she's not as physically pretty as a 20-year-old, AND she feels like you'd like her better if she was. Holding your smart thoughts in when you're both mad and tired and frustrated. Working all the time because to you, love means taking care of her, but to her, it's abandonment because taking care of her means spending time with her. Not understanding your kids, and being frustrated at the choices they're making. Having to choose between paying the rent and paying the car insurance this month. Her mom. Your mom. Feeling like you don't measure up in her book, but in another girl's eyes you're amazing, but ignoring that and still going back to her every night. Still letting him know that you respect him when you think he's being a doofus (trust me, these are not mutually exclusive).
Weirdly, love, a lot of the time, means acting like you love the person when you don't feel love. And that's not something you can put in a two-hour movie, or a song. It probably isn't something you can put in words at all - it's just something you can feel. When for the fifth time this week your son's wet the bed, and one of you has to get up at three a.m. to take care of it, and you both have to be up at six for work, and you sigh and take it. Because you don't feel love then. You just feel frustration, and exhaustion, and you just try to say as little as possible because you don't feel an overwhelming sense of love for your wife or your son, but you still don't want to say anything that would hurt either of them later (like, in the morning, when they'll both remember it and you won't). You don't think about why. You don't feel like doing it. But you do.
It's weird. Really weird. But pursuing that through all of the mundane - making the choices that spell love even when you don't feel it - it takes awhile to get to what's beyond the fake love. I don't aim for spending time with my friend's photo - I want to hang out with him. You're not shooting for the fake love, because you know it isn't real, but you don't know what else there is. You just know, kind of, maybe, hope anyway, that there's something after all this.
And there is. But it's hard to put the value of it into words. It's a different kind of adventure. It's a different kind of intensity - a softer intensity, maybe. There are things in the world that grow like love does, but I don't know what they are. Trees, maybe - you can't get a solid climbing tree in five years. I guess.. it's not something boring, might be closer to what I'm trying to say. All the crazy, frustrating adventures, sometimes four decades' worth or more, has taught you whether or not you can depend on each other. Whether the lines you're using for your climbing harness are going to hold you, or where not to use them.
That's a decent comparison. When you're still uncertain about your equipment, you don't put it to the test on anything where you're going to get seriously hurt or killed if it fails. You do small climbs, work on different challenges. You can't take the big adventures until you know that your partner's going to be there through the whole thing.
If you aim for the fake love Klosterman talks about, you're going to be disappointed even if you get it. It's hard to get to, because life events tangle it up. But, man, you get there, and then what? It's flat. It's happy, but it's flat. The adventure's gone. You're not SUPPOSED to get there; it's a story. It's a picture. Like Cinderella - when they say "happily ever after," you know life is not a smooth cruise of bliss. They're not saying this life is; Cinderella's just a story. The fierce love that hangs on through bumps off course and flagging emotions and crap you never wanted in your life but hell you got it anyway so you're gonna grit your teeth and get through it...you can't put that in fake love. You can't put that in a four-minute song, or a two-hour movie. You can't have someone tell you about it. You're going to have to be in it before you recognize it, and like rafting crazy rapids, you're going to be too busy trying to keep things together to recognize anything. So, you'll probably only know it after it comes. And then you'll be glad you stuck it out.
And then, after that, you'll have to ask yourself why you're listening to ME about this, because I'm not yet thirty. :)
Quick Links
Latest Comment
Re: So don't you bring me down today. - everydaaayyyyyy is so wonderfulllll then sundenlyyyy it's so hard to...
| Terms of Service
| Privacy Policy
