There’s a new crop of stories emerging that try to center on more realistic views of romance and relationships. Examples include Alain de Botton’s novel The Course of Love, John Bowe’s collection of anecdotes Us: Americans Talk About Love, The New York Times’Modern Love column, Sue Johnson’s couples therapy book Hold Me Tight, and Esther Perel’s couples therapy podcast Where Should We Begin?. All of these works have their flaws, and it’s no surprise that only the first of the five is a work of fiction; the rest rely on the fact that the stories are real in order to engage their audience.
An alternative to telling realistic stories is using hyperbolized humor to reveal the underlying problems with idealized romance. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend does so with aplomb, and even Disney has begun to caricature its own romanticized world with Frozen’s “Love is an Open Door.” The heightened emotional nature of song and dance that audiences love might not suit a low-drama, high-realism story, but it can suit an obviously exaggerated situation. By redirecting those heightened emotions for satiric occasions rather than realistic ones, humor could play a fascinating role in influencing us to examine our unhealthy assumptions about love.
listening broadly and listening deeply both inspire new ideas. listening broadly exposes you to variety that you can incorporate into your own work; listening deeply gives you insight into how to capture a specific idea in your work. i’ve found that the art of listening deeply surfaces across many fields:
in drawing and design
craft matters, but drawing classes aren’t just about hand motions. if anything, my drawing and design classes have been focused on helping me deeply see – how are light and shadow meeting on this building edge? how is this color made? being able to look for and build intuition for these questions is what makes my charcoal more accurately match the world, my paint more vibrant and true.
to draw well, see deeply.
in product management and leadership
speaking well matters, but good communication isn’t just about choosing the right words and saying them confidently. if anything, my experiences as a product manager have been focused on helping me deeply listen – why is my coworker feeling troubled about our approach? what is this user really thinking when they use the product? being able to listen for and ask after these questions is what makes highly effective and empathic leaders.
to communicate well, listen deeply.
in music and conducting
how you move your arms matters, but good conducting isn’t just about precise motions. if anything, my conducting class has been focused on helping me deeply listen – how are the violins in conversation with each other? how is the viola adding depth and color, or the bass driving the harmonic transition? how does the timbre of the string articulation affect the emotion? being able to listen for and account for these questions is what makes a conductor connect with her musicians.
“At the heart of a sulk lies a confusing mixture of intense anger and an equally intense desire not to communicate what one is angry about. The sulker both desperately needs the other person to understand and yet remains utterly committed to doing nothing to help them do so. The very need to explain forms the kernel of the insult: if the partner requires an explanation, he or she is clearly not worth of one. We should add that it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk: it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love.”
— Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
What I love about this book: it talks about the right problems. In a world filled with happily-ever-after fairytales and stereotyped black-and-white good-or-bad relationships, de Botton chooses to grapple with what it means for two real and imperfect people to be in a real and imperfect relationship. He describes the individuals’ feelings and the relationship problems in a way that resonates with relationship experiences as they might actually happen, rather than in some idealized form.
What I don’t love about this book: it sometimes shows wrong or oversimplified behaviors. I worry that people will treat this book as a guide for how to respond in their own relationships, and there were at least three problematic behaviors that bothered me.
Effective communication is oversimplified. While it’s great for a person to apologize if he thinks he has done something wrong, the author seems to imply that an apology is sufficient to heal a relationship after a fight, when it doesn’t actually solve what actually caused the fight. I wish there had been a follow-up scene to the apology, in which the two people discussed what happened and why, demonstrated strong listening skills, brainstormed potential solutions, and then tried to make real changes in their behavior for each other.
Honesty is not valued as highly as I think it should be. Even by the end of the book, one character chooses to “not hurt his partner’s feelings” and hide his affair from his partner forever, rather than tell the truth about his affair. I find this appalling. I’ll write another post about honesty in relationships sometime, but one of the reasons I think honesty is so important in relationships is that by being honest, you give your partner the agency to act based on the information you have, and by lying you are robbing them of that agency. That seems wrong.
Polygamy and jealousy are oversimplified. The author seems, through one of the characters, to claim one authoritative view on jealousy and affairs: that affairs are only bad in that they hurt your partner, but that this is sufficiently damning to put affairs off limits. This is certainly a valid way to view sex outside of marriage, but it’s only one perspective, and in a healthy relationship, I think the two parties should talk about their views rather than assume how the other person would feel. Two people could certainly commit to a monogamous relationship, or they could mutually commit to allowing certain kinds of sex outside of marriage. Two people could agree that they would feel jealous and unhappy about it happening, or they could agree that they will aim to be happy that their partner is living their fullest and happiest life, even if it involves sex with someone else (see compersion: opposite of jealousy). In my view, the discussion and shared commitment is critical, and I’m disappointed that the book didn’t give it appropriate weight.
EDIT (2018-06-30): A few compositions later, I look back on this list and see clear gaps! There’s no mention here of video game music, japanese pop/rock, or the great american songbook, all of which have shaped my view of music significantly. Perhaps this list can evolve over time.
The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful… Their love story did not begin until afterwards: she fell ill and he was unable to send her home as he had the others. Kneeling by her as she lay sleeping in his bed, he realized that someone had sent her downstream in a bulrush basket. I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I don’t like Kundera’s novels — I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being a few years ago and Ignorance just now, and these novels feel incomplete, unresolved — but there’s something about the poetry of his words that captivates the romantic part of my imagination. We have these poignant little moments in life, and this is what Kundera captures so well.
I went to see a new dentist earlier this week, and you forget this when you’ve had the same dentist for years, but a new dentist needs to diagnose what’s happening with your teeth all over again, so he takes your x-rays and tell you all these things you already know about yourself. That you had braces; twice, in fact, because your parents didn’t realize that having braces in elementary school was unwise. That you had your wisdom teeth taken out (three wisdom teeth; not two, not four, but three). That you still have a baby tooth — and this one you have to explain; you were born with an extra tooth on one side and one missing on the other, so they removed the extra adult tooth and pulled the one above it down with a gold chain, and the baby tooth never got pushed out and remains in your mouth to this day. It’s going to fall out soon, he says. Not tomorrow, but soon.
And suddenly, you are aware of your adulthood — not because you have a baby tooth, or because that baby tooth will someday soon fall out and you’ll either need an implant or have a missing-tooth smile for the rest of your life, but because you are the only soul in the world who knows about this baby tooth, and all at once it hits you, what it means to be alone.
“L’embarquement pour Cythère” (The Embarkation for Cythera) by Antoine Watteau, which inspired Debussy’s “L’isle Joyeuse.” Cythera is the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love.
Written in January 2011. Listen to the piece here, as recorded by Vladimir Horowitz.
…the aural work of Claude Debussy, musician of suggestion and atmosphere, not explicit emotion or story. If one perceives a song as a mirage only, how can one faithfully capture the music in words without involving assumptive interpretations? This is my challenge as I listen to Debussy’s “L’isle Joyeuse,” or “The Island of Pleasure.”
The first listen, eyes closed: This piece sounds like something I have known before—I have not heard it before, nor have I heard anything quite like it, but my soul feels a nostalgic familiarity. The experience seems like walking through a misty dream, or hearing the texture of soft white light. The trills, the escalation, and the dissonance create a tension that holds over me throughout the piece, never leaving until the very end.
The second listen, still eyes closed: The same musical ideas return over and over—the pervading trills and downward trios, the fleeting call and response, the passionate melody—but each time, they are new again. Yet, they are new not because of the modulations, nor is it the dynamics, nor are these musical designs returning in the way a pop song cannot stop repeating itself. Once heard, the ideas—not the notes, but the inkling of the tension their pattern oncecaused—are more powerful the second time, the louder time, the time it appears in a different key, but not because of those facts.How is a repeated idea new, but not because of what makes it different, but because it is repeated, which should make it no longer new?
The third listen, eyes open so I can record what I feel, section by section: There are suspenseful trills and trios, graceful and playfully light ups and downs, dissonance with harmony, elevating motions, grand arpeggios across the keys. The glorious breakthrough of the melodious theme, consonant yet uncertain, mellifluous, surreal. This music makes me want to move; this music moves me. Dissonant reprises, sprinting scales, spinning out of control to a sudden STOP, then a steady growth. A glorious culmination—intense warmth, then a chill, runs through my body as the poignant theme returns, the jarring 5-on-3 rhythm of mismatched notes only adding to the magnificence. As in a pas de deux,¹ with a man’s powerful whirling grand jetés across the dance floor, sweeping the lady into a motion that spirals outward to the universe. Finally, return to the tensive trills, tremolo, crescendo, accelerando, expand—and done.
The fourth listen, viewing the musical score: Debussy demands the impossible of his performer. How can one articulate piano, piu piano, and pianissimo—differences in volume that the human ear can barely perceive?²The interpreter must use his own judgment to let the dynamics expand beyond the given narrow range, if he wishes to convey the full color of the piece’s dynamic tensions.
The fifth listen, eyes closed again: The middle melody, bold yet wistful, is an altogether different species from the main themes. Do you know the precious feeling of waking up beside your lover? The gentle smile, the tranquil rays sifting onto the sheets, treasured in his arms, an internal yet explosive passion? That is how the melody cherishes me. In movies, there is a romantic image of running downhill through a large grassy field, the wind through your hair like silk on your skin…this characterizes the post-melody. And now, imagine the desire for an idealistic, eternal love fulfilled. This love seems but an illusion, for love is mercurial, complex, vague; the rapid repetition of motifs perhaps exudes apprehension, anxiety, tension; the confusion we find when enveloped by love; the surprise color changes, like the sudden march-like major chords leading to the climax, might capture love’s vicissitudes; the tender singing voice of the second theme captures the high of being one with one’s love. “L’isle Joyeuse” could be a snapshot of the turbulent emotions of love, both the reality and the dream, both the insanity and the reason.
The sixth listen, now paying particular attention to contrast, in order to explore how Debussy manipulates the tension: he fills his work with contradictions: the juxtaposition of grating trills with playful up and down arpeggios, and of cacophonous note mixtures with smooth, measured melody; the coexistence of consonance and dissonance, superimposed rhythms; uplifting brilliance contrasting with quietude; lack of definite scale or scheme, surprise bursts throughout.“L’isle Joyeuse” inspires in me an overall sense of happiness and peace, but deep and jumbled feelings. Debussy calls it an “Island of Pleasure,” but much of the piece is particularly intended to sound discordant and tense, if not unpleasant. The pleasant and unpleasant exist alongside, swapping roles of harmony and melody, articulation and dynamics, rhythm and speed: the sweet melody of the second theme is placed with bitter rhythm, the violent harmonies leading up to the climax are paired with classical-style swelling of both loudness and velocity.
The seventh listen: Music of the classical and romantic periods established the norms for evoking emotions: the minor key is for doleful nocturnes, the major key for grand, sweeping pronouncements of delight. Debussy, however, does not commit to any key for his description of pleasure; he even uses the blindingly positive major chords of C and Eb for a fleeting two measures each to rudely interfere with the recapitulation’s dissonant chaos. Until the finish, Debussy never entirely relieves the listener from musical tension; he allows dissonance to give way to consonance, or halts the countless reiterations, or lets the voice to descend to lower pitches, but never all at the same time. To describe his pleasure, Debussy instead seems to capture the stress that comes before it. Indeed, right after the final appearance of the melodious theme, the dissonant chaotic repeats itself again and again until there is resolution to the tonic chord, and the mind can relax. However, the pleasure is not only at the conclusion, but throughout; the powerful melodic theme, the mischievously swinging ups and downs, the haunting trills, still linger in the mind after it is done and the pleasure is gone. One finds pleasure in the process of achieving pleasure, yet this process is riddled with what is not purely pleasurable. To evoke pleasure, one necessarily searches for the displeasure, the stress, the tension; and only with that contrast does one find joy.
Footnotes
1. In ballet, a duet performed by the principal male and female, often in a romantic context.
2. piano is Italian for ”soft” in volume; piu piano and pianissimo are both Italian for “very soft.” Because piano and pianissimo are the standard dynamic markings for volume, and because piu piano is used only relative to piano, the pianist typically infers that piu piano is louder than pianissimo, but only negligibly so.
A Streetcar Named Desireand Cat on a Hot Tin Roofare two of my favorite plays, both written by Tennessee Williams. In “Swinging a Cat,” an essay that discusses how Williams collaborated with director Elia Kazan, scholar Bryan Parker writes:
A recurrent disagreement between Williams and Kazan…was that Kazan…considered that events should be shown to alter character, whereas Williams believed that [events] could only reveal what was basic and unchanging in a personality.
This is an enlightening point. Williams’s plays succeed because the unchanging characters have a magnetic authenticity. It turns out events do not change the core character; instead, they reveal how a character always was. For example, Stanley’s rape of Blanche completely alters Blanche’s outward behavior, but what remains for the reader is the sensation that Blanche has “always depended on the kindness of strangers” — and it is the twistedness of how that hasn’t changed that wrings the reader’s heart.
EDIT (2018-03-27): I have discovered an AMAZING episode of The Simpsons with a hilarious parody of streetcar. If you know the play, it is so worth your time.
A scene from Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors. Photograph taken by the author at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, October 2017.
There is a beautiful work by Ragnar Kjartansson in which eight musicians are filmed in eight different rooms of a mansion, all independently playing the same song, using a colored-pencil score, all in one take. The result is striking, moving, wondrous, and left me with a gracious envy and desire for musical connection.
Thank you to Tanay for recommending the work and to Sang for experiencing it with me.
EDIT (2023-03-20): The Visitors has returned to the SF MoMA and will be on view through June 2024. My emotional experience was just as deep the second time. I can’t recommend going more highly.
