{"id":163273,"date":"2023-02-14T11:29:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T16:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=163273"},"modified":"2023-02-17T10:40:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T15:40:00","slug":"love-songs-being-in-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/02\/14\/love-songs-being-in-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Songs: \u201cBeing in Love\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Jason Molina. Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, Licensed under CCO 2.0.<\/p><\/div>\n

I am not a terribly romantic person. An ex once described me as \u201cstable,\u201d which is hardly the most erotic quality. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m unfeeling, per se. I just prefer to keep these particular feelings at a slight remove, a step or two apart. So in those rare periods when love enters my life, the results are disastrous, consuming every private moment of my day. Even something as simple as a text message can make my body feel like it\u2019s falling apart. Yet what other agony gives so much pleasure? For \u201cbeing in love,\u201d as Jason Molina sings on his song of the same name, which he put out under the moniker Songs: Ohia, \u201cmeans you are completely broken.\u201d When he sings of breaking, it is as the prelude to being remade. \u201cAnd for the first time,\u201d he croons with delight, \u201cit is working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Molina, who died ten years ago, makes this statement of ultraromance sound like a dirge, all creaky organ and quaking drum machine with a single electric guitar keening softly overhead. The song exults even as it prepares to mourn. For as he notes, this passion\u2014all-consuming, overwhelming\u2014can burn through the fuel that fires it. I think back to Gillian Rose\u2019s description of desire as something monstrous, driving the lover onward, onward, until they burn out or their beloved withdraws. It can be a pitiless sensation, love, especially love unreturned, love held in suspension. \u201cThere is no democracy in any love relation,\u201d Rose writes in Love\u2019s Work<\/em>, \u201conly mercy.\u201d And there is no guarantee.<\/p>\n

This is what makes love monstrous: it invests loneliness and disappointment and hope with significance, even pleasure. Yet Rose also declares: \u201cLet me then be destroyed. For that is the only way I may have a chance of surviving.\u201d Her work testifies to the inexhaustibility of passion, a thing forever reforming itself.<\/p>\n

There is another version of \u201cBeing in Love\u201d on an out-of-print live album. When Molina sings \u201cIf you stick with me you can help me \/ I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll find new things to burn,\u201d his voice booms and the band surges, providing their own fuel for the song, pushing it through a full three minutes of overdriven guitar swells\u2014like proof that \u201cthe heart is a risky fuel to burn,\u201d proof enough that it\u2019s worth the risk. There is no safe distance here, no step or two apart. You must set fire to yourself\u2014you must let yourself be consumed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert Rubsam writes fiction and nonfiction. His work has been published in T<\/em>he New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Baffler,<\/em> and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe song exults even as it prepares to mourn.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[68609,17105,68608,17993],"class_list":["post-163273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-being-in-love","tag-despair","tag-jason-molina","tag-love-songs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLove Songs: \u201cBeing in Love\u201d by Robert Rubsam<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 14, 2023 \u2013 \u201cThe song exults even as it prepares to mourn.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/02\/14\/love-songs-being-in-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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