Love, and Other Tumours

“What is Love”?

This very question was posed by the visionary philosopher Haddaway en route to purchasing yet another yacht and the ensuing harem that was to feature at the numerous parties herewith; the dark lyrical undercurrent contained within the electronic throng dissipating simultaneously with armpit nectars beneath the neons of many a discotheque.

My very own Smash Hits ‘92 Compact Disc Record served as the vehicle for such existential probing, albeit from beneath a veil of surface imperfections that served to distort its message even further.

Our own early definitions of love are likely to consist of the confected nonsense peddled by studio executives keen to placate the masses and monopolise the share-market, manifesting in the form of inoffensive boy-meets-girl pap, with entertainment vices as the chief syringe thrusting at our collective jugular from the moment we detach from the breasts we will never gain nourishment from again.

It is only too easy to launch thine lobes into this lucrative abyss, in spite of the fact that mum (mom) and dad (dad) speak only in screams these days, have separate rooms and utilise your naïve shell as a conduit with which to communicate with each other in a display of passive-aggression unseen since the halcyon days of… actually, every day in our working lives.

And yet this flagrant saturation gathers apace - your mind now rendered a sieve being bombarded by Polaroids of grinning nuclear-families; John Sands greeting cards italicised to within an inch of decency proclaiming the most unreasonably saccharine prose, not to mention popular radio assaulting your defences with Boy Band filth masquerading as aural good-times (no, not the thing you do with your mouth).

It is, therefore, no wonder that we alight upon our adolescence mired in expectation and longing; an alleged soul-mate but one LOL/"Like"/gym-tense away and as an inevitable as the misery of another day.

Juvenile love, and, more correctly - lust - is the most awkward of all – a cacophony of desperate tongues, quivering hands and breathy platitudes sourced primarily from the most unthanked of role-models and supervisors: Television.

It is upon this tainted throne that we first allow the carcinogenic talons of commitment to inflict the first of many incisions upon our form, believing this to be the resting place of our ambitions until Brianna elopes with the captain of the Football/Mahjong/Croquet team – never to bat an eyelid in our direction again as we are simply “too nice” or something equally disquieting.

The hurt and embarrassment of such a termination can be felt for many moons, especially amidst the inescapable “banter” from supposed chums who are equally unaware that their very own Latitia is on the very cusp of experimenting with her "BFF" Caprice having finally tired of the overwhelming body-odour and violent tongue-bashings they have been victims of.

Perhaps the fortunate do walk among us, assimilating somehow with the most rarefied of creatures – one who can relate and hence one who is relatable.

It is often bellowed that opposites attract, however this is perplexing outside of the realm of quantum-physics and that of but one of many Scandinavian gifts - Lego.

In fact, an alleged trope of monogamous-bliss is that the less one has in common with another, the better; two immovable objects flung against each other violently and left to make good on the initial energy expended, however involuntary.

And yet popular music still speaks to us in tongues, coiled with the promise of easy prey whom prefer to focus only on the fleeting fickleness and not the deep chill of reality.

That love song never spoke of the eternal winter left behind after the initial warmth of unfamiliarity and adventure; the dulcet tones wafting from your FM crevice hiding the truth that dare not speak its name.

That ode to love never verbalised the evenings of piercing silence that followed another tenuous argument, nor the tears shed in private at having wasted not only days or weeks or even months, but rather years on a lost cause; an abandoned lot to call your very own.

“You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” is of course infinitely more marketable than “You Are the Dull Ache at the Base of My Brain-Stem”, even if the latter would come to define the bulk of your tenure at the prickled wheel of this sinking vessel.

“I Will Aways Love You” will naturally appease the stake-holders to a far greater extent than “Who Are You, and What Have You Done With My Lover?”, even though the latter will more accurately depict the metamorphosis of a treasure to a terror.

Once more the almighty Dollar/Rupee/Kronor and its omnipresent brethren lays the foundation and lulls the unwary into a sense of emotional-cringe, even though the protagonists’ target (or antagonist, ultimately) is but an equally-scarred organism with similar pitfalls and insecurities, and is, in actuality, not the raven-haired, lingerie-clad messiah from the Dokken video upon which to typify your humanity and deal in absolutes unto.

Belief is fuelled in the abovementioned throughout ones’ formative years, and once this is ruthlessly exposed as the turd floating on the surface of this de-chlorinated pool nobody has cared to acknowledge or even sanitise, it is all-too-easy to flounce into the protracted arms of despair.

However, this need not be the atomic mass of the serrated steel currently aerating your veins, nor the fibre-optic cable facilitating your autoerotic-asphyxiation, for there is meaning amidst the illin’.

Great comfort can be had in knowing that one will almost certainly never actually meet their perfect match, nor travel to the Belarusian village they currently inhabit with extensions of their already-extended families, and nor will they ever truly obtain that which will satisfy the darkest of desires.

As with all intangibles, it is the agony of uncertainty and discontent that renders one fresh-of-face and facade and hence brimming with enthusiasm to face the next roasting at the hands of the peculiar sentient-being blackening the doorway and later refusing to change the channel.

It is in this vein, and somewhere abreast the many lights of our collective dialysis-machine that we must face the greatest unspoken truth – love isn’t love at all, but please do stay for the canapés.