Narsissies, insurgencies and other fragments of love’s revolts

Love
Love affair
Love apple
Love beads
Love Canal
Love child
Love feast
Love handles
Love knot
Love potion
Love seat
Lovebird
Lovebite
Love-in
Love-in-a-mist
Loveless
Lovelock Lovelorn Lovely Lovemaking
Lover Lover’s knot Lovesick Lovey-dovey
Loving Loving cup Loving-kindness

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Shame about my brrrrning songs not making it...oh well. Did you see it? I will be happy if you have a look at the songs. In a way you were a bit of the filter in choosing them...

Sorry about your friend, how the f*** do these things happen? Strange...and sad, and strange.

God almighty, Yason, you a re doing so much! Easy cowboy. Wow.

Thanks for the porn list. I will look at them and tell my lost student...ahhh lost in porn, those were the days. And thanks for the photos of you, so nice, Yason. I think I am falling in love with the whole image thing again. It’s so nice.

Anyway, I have to be quick because I forgot to pay my phone and Internet bill and will be disconnected any minute now, so I have to send lovely messages to everyone in case the withdrawal kills me during these couple weeks of no communication.

I’m sending you a picture taken yesterday.

Love, P.

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Please, let me do voodoo on this one particular fortune teller on Valentine’s Day. What a liar.

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I’d like to introduce a photographic work I did three years ago. It’s name is "Narsissy‚ Narsissy, say hello. Narsissy, just said goodbye." Narsissy belongs to a burgeoning sub-group of annoying metrosexuals who shield themselves from love’s harm with their compact mirrors – the sole beloved being a reflection, an after-image and a shadow. It comes from narcissism which is named after Narcissus, and both derive from the Greek word narke "numb" from which we also get the word narcotic. Narsissies love their prescription pills, botox injections and rehab clinics. An interesting variation of the ancient Narsissy legend came out of Greece where a beautiful lad named Narcissus lived. A young man, Ameinias, was crazy about Narcissus who ignored his advances. He eventually got bored of Ameinias’ affections and sent him a gift of a sword. Ameinias killed himself with the gift in front of Narcissus’ door and as he wilted, cursed Narcissus. This curse was fulfilled when Narcissus became entranced by the image of his reflection in the pool and in desperation, killed himself.

Another version claimed that a young man, Ameinias, was crazy about Narcissus, but he ignored Ameinias’ advances. He eventually got bored of Ameinias’ affections and sent him a gift of a sword. Ameinias killed himself with the gift in front of Narcissus’ door and as he wilted, cursed Narcissus. This curse was fulfilled when Narcissus became entranced by the image of his reflection in the pool and in desperation, killed himself

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Cinema is a virtual pool that projects and reflects the mysteries of human desire, entrancing its human subjects (us) via its image-object (film). No doubt hordes of lovers and non-lovers alike spend dates, most especially on Valentine’s, seeing a movie. It’s kind of wholesome, this kind of threesome: You, your real lover and the your dream lover a.k.a. the film actor/actress. The not-so-wholesome bit is the slow and painful realization that the dream/love will always be absent. But don’t fret. Absence is actually a busy and full-time career. It keeps you from doing anything else. Waiting for/ Watching the/ Postponing the One have become both the itineraries and icons of now. After watching fiction in the movie theater with our beloved, we then create our own fiction on the way home: Where were you last night? Who was that woman who winked at me in the toilet? When will he ever ask me out? The staging of desires, reproaches, doubts and melancholia happen on and off screen. We are all tears and spits from the same pool.

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13 films to watch Valentine’s go bye bye: Cleopatra, Happy Together, Age of Innocence, Pink Flamingos, Liquid Sky, Raspberry Reich, Breaking the Waves, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Chuck and Buck, Lonesome Cowboys, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Pido Dida 1-3, and Hiroshima Mon Amour.

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The French know their love and their doom and their black humor. I spent my first Christmas in Europe not in London but in Paris, communed with the dead greats and the low lifes (like Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein and Jim Morrison) at Cimitiere de Pere Lachaise then hung out in a café just across it, aptly called Valentin. Whether in art, literature or music, these unique individuals communicated and practiced different kinds of love, passion, whatever. They were akin to the apostles and art was their gospel. In a similar vein, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments was like the Holy Bible to me during my younger, sentimental days. Bewildered by the exciting new world of freshman university life and the seduction of yet uncharted loves that came with a progressive and liberal education, the slim book with an anonymous cover photo of a woman kissing her own reflection in the mirror (could this be Echo’s vengeance upon Narcissus?) served as my compass in mapping out back then the confusing mythographies of awkward post-pubescent love.

Today I still don’t have Sex and the City.

But while the French philosopher Roland Barthes, who authored these Fragments‚ (other favorite titles are Mythologies and S/Z) may not have had the fashion chutzpah of a Carrie Bradshaw – not that we don’t treat her like a real person – she in turn could never have written something like The Fashion System. Sorry, SJP, but not even a fancy pair of Manolos can ever be as sexy as a brilliant mind on killer stilettos. Heels, walk!

In short, Roland Barthes is Medulla-on-Wheels. This Valentine daze, dump your date and ride with paramour par excellence Manong Barthes. His book won’t waste your time or cramp his style in giving a dull narrative about love. Instead, as the title implies, he provides us with fragments – some of which come from literature and some from his own personal ruminations…basically of a lover’s point of view. Love is built upon banal fragments, and therein lies its whole idea.

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Insurgency of a different but lovely kind: The marriage of guerrilla rebels Ka Jose and Ka Andres.

Congratulations.