Evolutio Amoris

Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.

- Leonard Cohen

Here's a London-wife-mother-woman-humanbean in a black box theatre using performance as a way to confess, remember, release, change, die and return, because performance can be that potent and powerful.

We all deserve second (third and fourth…) chances, many of which you can give to yourself, in fact. Hopefully you experience multiple renaissances within yourself, within this lifetime, spearheaded by your willingness to forgive yourself.

And then, you may find yourself breaking the chains of codependency. Spoiler: this may take you more than a few rounds, get comfortable with the discomfort.

“Was I searching for a dancer whose name I did not know, or was I searching for the dancing part of myself?”

― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

PS I lived in New York City for twenty years and one of my favorite places to go to was in the East Village @nuyoricanpoetscafe. I will never forget the first time I saw @yesimsarahjones perform there.

And by the by, creating these “darker” videos isn’t about dwelling in, or adding to, the darkness. The characters are meant to provoke thought and empathy…and, if I may be so bold, honour parts of the human experience. I go about that using different talents available to me; namely the word, drama, satire and song. Hopefully they can help others feel less alone, by saying the things we sometimes find hard to say, by maybe giving you the space to laugh or cry or both!

And finally, here’s please mull on the idea of hate in relationships - from Judith Viorst’s “Necessary Losses” (which I am loving but my only critique would be it is outdated in how heteronormative it is)…I loved this passage so much about hate in our relationships:

“Our incompatible human desires, our conflicts, our disappointments assure us all of hate in the state of partnership. But the use of that brutal word hate, of that unloving, unlovable word, may make us wince…. Particularly in relation to someone we love.

Hate can be unconscious as well as conscious, transient as well as entrenched and sustained. Hate can be a blip as well as a constant drumbeat of bitter anger and pain…

It is easy to recognise hate in what have been described as “cat and dog” relationships, where partners - though deeply bound to each other - are engaged in continual warfare day and night. But there are also “sunshine” relationships which present a facade of happiness and “deny and keep inner realities out of sight”…

Between these two extremes are partners who go through seasons in their relationships when all connections are broken and darkness prevails, when the tolerance that allows them to accept their unmet expectations fails, when they feel - if they can be honest about it - hate.

And sometimes they express that hate through physical acts of abuse and :”Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Verbal savaging. And sometimes they choose to deliver far more disguised and indirect I-hate-you messages….

Fantasies are another way of expressing marital hatred without an open exchange of hostilities. Connie, a gentle woman I know, allows herself to imagine that her husband’s plane has dropped into the sea. She also enjoys the fantasy of disposing of him with the aid of a Mafia hit man. “I don’t think I really mean it” she says “but I don’t completely not mean it. And simply thinking about it cheers me up.”

Perhaps, says psychoanalyst Leon Altman, we could love better if we could hate more cheerfully. And perhaps we could hate more cheerfully if we could keep in mind the compelling finding that animal studies reveal: that there are no personal bonds without aggression. That animals devoid of aggression band without bonding, unite anonymously. Nobel scientist Konrad Lorenz concludes unequivocally: no aggression, no love….

What we must do with our “love forever, hate never” dream is - let them go.”