about romance...

In addition to what you will find here…

My novels usually have romance, which isn’t always tame. I’m unapologetic about it. When you dig deeply enough, past endless onion skins of pretenses and big words and philosophies it’s all about sex, death and love. Meaning my novels usually are R16.

Romance has a long history, closely linked to society’s expectatibns about what is actually is and/or supposed to be. Anybody interested in some reading about the topic from the point of view of a sociologist—Eva Illouz, one of the very few I actually pay attention to—may treat themselves to Why Love Hurts and The End of Love.

While I accept that what Illouz telling us is almost certainly right—her arguments are disturbingly convincing—I would like, and actually believe that I have a good reason, to think that there’s something more profound and deeper, to human connection, especially between those who ‘love’ each other; be it romantically or through other bonds.

Yes, ‘societies’—whatever they happens to be in any given context, place or time—will impose measures, through processes ranging from subtle indoctrination and implicit brainwashing to outright coercion, to regulate those connections; have them conform to patterns of thinking and behavior the societies in question want. The end result is almost always that relationships become predominantly transactional; even when they shouldn’t be. Transactionality destroys ‘true love’, if you will. The kind that is all about two people forming a deep and unconditional connection.

Society will interfere; we live in groups of many sizes, all of them having formed social contracts to continue existing. This creates irresolvable conflicts, built into human existence, merely because we are social animals. Fiction, as Illouz observes correctly, is and has always been obsessed with this conflict; for good reasons, as it rules all our lives.

And yet, and yet…I stubbornly cling to the belief that we can make our need to connect and remain deeply connected to someone we love and who love us become something tangible; not because it’s necessary for ultimately transactional purposes or social mores, but because itit is part of what Eddington called the ‘and’.

“We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two.
We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
Arthur Eddington

There is a very deep truth here. Which is why maybe we can speak of ‘true love’ as opposed to the socially, contextually and rationally regulated.

‘This is true love.You think this happens every day?’

Yes, I’m a Princess Bride fan, and always will be. And I’ll continue to write fiction in which ‘true love’ becomes real for my protagonists; because they’ve either discovered the deep meaning of Eddington’s ‘and’ or maybe they just can’t help themselves but to make it come true for them, because they’re meant to be one, split into two individuals. It’s always a tightrope, but somehow they can eliminate transactionality from the equation and replace it by a deep understanding of how 2=1AND1, not just 2=1+1. Which makes 1AND1=1+. More than one, but still one.

This has nothing to do with ‘sacredness’ or anything even remotely religious. I have no time for religions or beliefs in deities of any kind. Except for a few insignificant and basically harmless nature worshipping outliers—religions are spiritually brutal, oppressive, national borders ignoring, controllers of human societies. In that way they do provide coherence and coexistence; never mind how ludicrous their creeds may be. But at the same time they elicit a terrible price, in that they have always and will always do what they can to destroy ‘true love’. The same, by the way goes for everything qualifying as ‘ideologies’, and never mind how well-meaning they may appear, or how well-intentioned they started off from. The road to hell is paved with good intentions…

True love—the 1AND1=1+ kind—at its core is timeless anarchy. It’s what makes humans mysteriously different from all other creatures.

We should celebrate that anarchy; celebrate romance; not look down our noses at ‘happy endings’; and in our minds always, when we read THE END under a happy ending romance, replace it with THE END OF A BEGINNING.

I know that modernist cynicism—for cynicism it is—about ‘true ‘love’ in the it’s all about the ‘and’ sense weighs in oppressively and persuasively against true love’s very existence. My counsel is for us to have the courage to ignore it and surrender to it anyway. If we don’t, what’s left for us but meaninglessness?