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Admit it, some of the mushiest, corniest and puke inspiring lines about love that you’ve ever said or committed to paper were those inspired by, paraphrased from or directly plagiarized from love songs. I even know of one college boardmate who splices up love songs or lines from valentine cards, shuffles them and puts them back together to form love letter Frankensteins.
“I will always love you, deep inside this heart of mine….blah blah”
“I’ll never break your heart… I’d rather die than live without you… blah blah…”
“I get so weak in the knees, I could hardly breathe, I lose all control… blah blah…”
Believe it or not, I’ve seen these lines or at least variations of these lines in most of the love letters I’ve managed to intercept in my highschool and college years. No one’s exempt. Everybody has those lines that when remembered, makes us want to bite our pillows at night, grimace and scream in disgust, or if possible, go back in time so that we can tackle, whack in the head or shoot with a tranquilizer dart our younger selves before it spews out or commit into paper these icky, drama laden lines. He he, you might even be one of those people who made love letter tape recordings like the one below:
(Based on a true story)
(Michael Learns to Rock Background)
“I’m on the floor….”
Cristina… (hikbi or sob for English)
“Counting one minute more….”
I’m sorry for the things I’ve done… (hikbi… blows nose on hanky)…
Love songs are indeed a pervasive force in modern relationships. Of course, the same goes with romance movies and tagalog pocketbooks but that would ruin my blog title. He he. From the poorest to the richest in our land, from your enemies to your friends, you see traces of Moulin Rogue, Only you, Kailangan kita ( I need you) and a multitude of other romance movies or love songs in their everyday love lives. Take a look around and you will see most couples living out snatches of Teleserye scripts or romance movies or making an interpretative dance out of love songs.
Girl breaks up with guy because of an incriminating text message in his mobile phone. Guy makes a YouTube “My Girl” video to prove his undying love once again. Girl, in the meantime, spends her nights crying by the window, listening to heart breaking love songs while mushy memories flashes through her mind. Girl eventually gets back together with guy just in time for her friend’s debut. (It’s like a scene straight out of a Koreanovela during prime time bida)
Couple’s parents hate each others guts but guy and girl love each other to distraction. Girl’s parents decide to send their daughter to a faraway province to finish schooling. Guy cries and says he will commit suicide if girl leaves. Girl and guy decide to elope instead. Spends a few days in a hovel fucking like crazy and etches their names in a local Narra tree. Girl grows hungry because guy is a bum and knows nothing about work. Guy misses his allowance and drinking buddies. Both eventually return home after money runs out. After a few meals, forgets ordeal sufficiently enough to start believing that love is stronger than hunger and the Romeo and Juliet love story begins all over again.. at least until the guy or girl grows tired of story and finds another love. Story switches to another romance movie.
How many times have you seen complex story plots forced into otherwise simple relationship problems? How many times have you found yourself preferring love songs over common sense? Basking in the feeling of utter heartbreak and theatrical despair - buying suicide pills, a block of dry ice or a hara-kiri knife, pretending to contemplate death seriously before self preservation kicks in at the convenient moment (usually after telling friends or loved one your plans and your countdown).
Who do we blame for the puke inspiring moments in our lives? Who do we lynch for putting those God-awful lines in our heads? Who do we make responsible for the still present corny lines and scripts we still utter and live out in our current relationships?
Yup! Mushy love songs! Particularly those from Backstreet Boys, NSync, 98 degrees, Aegis, April Boy, etc, etc ,etc. Our sponge-like brains are influenced by love songs so much that most of us still cling to some naïve, corny and totally senseless notions about love even now – decades after we’ve stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Some of them are as follows:
1. Forbidden Love
Forbidden love is called such for a very sensible reason – because IT IS WRONG. Girl loves cousin = incest. Girl loves married guy – Adultery. Guy loves another guy = Sodomy, Girl loves another girl = Great Porn, Girl loves Priest-to-be = sacrilege, Guy loves bestfriend’s Girlfriend = Treason (violates finders-keepers principle), Girl loves another Girl’s Boyfriend = Hostile Takeover.
All of the above situations are basically examples of wanting something that should not be yours in the first place as it is already owned by another party. It’s basically stealing from others but because people who justify themselves call it “love” it becomes acceptable to society. It’s like doing your grocery by filching shopping bags in the package counter instead of choosing from among the goods still for sale. Get your own shopping cart and do your own shopping for God’s sake!
Yeah right… at least until the hunger kicks in and the debts pile up. This phrase should be changed to “Love will keep us alive, Till debt do us part”. Have you ever seen doctors do a “love” transfusion to a dying man? Or couples eating love from their dinner plates? Because the last time I checked, love doesn’t have a calorie value, or vitamins and minerals for that matter. Moreover, if I remember correctly, love killed Romeo and Juliet instead of keeping them alive.
Take a look at the couples that elope because of this principle. Love isn’t keeping them alive, their friends, their renegade relatives, or their parent’s credit card is keeping them alive! Take out the support system and these people degenerate into squabbling animals after 3 days without meals. On deeper reflection, only people (youngsters usually) who don’t have any concrete plans of feeding themselves when they elope or who don’t have any experience being responsible for themselves seem fond of using this line. On the other hand, people who can feed themselves and have concrete plans on how to prove their love say “LETS GET MARRIED” instead.
3. The Unreciprocated Love
Who will you spend the rest of your life with? One who loves you with all his/her heart or the one who you love with all your heart but doesn't love you back? Talk about depressing choices. This is yet another mushy corny and totally crappy concept about love given to us by love songs. It’s like being asked to choose between eating food chewed by someone else and chewing food to be eaten by someone else. Both are in the gray fringes of the definition of eating but both are not what we probably had in mind when we said we wanted to eat.
Take the first example for instance, choosing someone who loves you but you don’t love back isn’t love! It’s about you cold bloodedly taking advantage of another person’s stupidity! It’s the acquisition of a lifetime maid, sugar daddy or sex slave (come to think of it, these aren’t so bad, he he he). Choosing the one that you love (who doesn’t love you back), on the other hand, makes you the joke instead of the one who’s laughing. Moreover, if the one you love doesn’t want to get married to you in the first place, you get demoted to being a masochistic pathetic pain in the ass. He he he
4. Forever and a Day
It may be sweet, it may be flattering as hell, it may be romantic, but the promise of loving someone forever or until our last breath or until we die or until eternity is actually a LIE. Why? Because this kind of promise is not for us to give. Who the hell knows what will happen in the future? Moreover, who are you to promise that you will never change? Will you still love him if you catch him humping his secretaries? Will you still love him if he believes the aliens are coming and takes a sudden interest in memorizing the Klingon dictionary? Will you still love him if you suddenly hit your head in a car crash and get amnesia? Will you still love him if he develops a nasty habit of farting on your face whenever you’re asleep? Chances are.. NO.
I know a guy who promised his girl that he will love her forever, he did love her.. at least until he got her pregnant and he hightailed it out of town. I once knew a girl who promised a guy that she will spend eternity loving him, eternity in their case was until she found someone else better to replace the guy. Love, doesn’t last forever. It lasts only as long as we need or want it too. The guy that the girl left for another guy in the preceding story went as far as saying to me that he will never love another girl as long a he lives, he was hurting so bad, crying every night before he went to sleep and was fancying committing suicide at that time. I told him to give it one year and he’ll realize how stupid he looked at that moment. One year passed and he did feel stupid about the whole thing. Even the couples who last more than 50 years together will tell you love isn’t forever, it usually alternates between love and indifference, sometimes love and blinding hate where they circle each other with knives in their hands.
5. Love is Blind
Love isn’t blind and there are no martyrs for love, there are stupid people though. A woman cries herself to sleep, nursing the fresh bruises her boyfriend gave her when he suddenly turned Rocky Balboa and gave her the walloping of her life, try as she might she can’t leave him because she thinks she loves him. Is this love or the fear of standing up for oneself and seeking needed change? A guy suffers constant verbal abuse from his girl friend, gives in to his girl friend’s irrational demands and lives a life slightly better than the slaves of ancient times. Is this love or the lack of self respect?
I find it hard to believe that something as beautiful as love could be used to justify our insecurities and fears. Love inspires flowers, chocolates and the occasional whispered nothings. It does not inspire re-enactments of the Matrix’s battles, boot camp-like derogatory language or Dobby the House elf-like slaves. Love isn’t blind, we are.
6. Soul Mates and Serendipity
Soul mates, destiny, the perfect man.. These words are just synonyms to “winning the jackpot lotto” in romantic lingo. Tell me, what kind of guy would you suppose is perfect for a conceited, empty headed, two faced bitch? Certainly not a responsible, self respecting, principled guy! Give him this girl and he’d run like the hounds of hell were after him the first chance he gets. What about a guy who falls in love with every girl who shows an interest in him? Or a girl who thinks that sex is like a pin code you press before activating a serious relationship?
There are no soul mates or persons destined for us in this earth – there are only those people we choose to best complement what we hold dear in ourselves. Some people choose based on IQ or the lack of it depending on whether they want someone they can intelligently talk to or someone they can use as a sounding board. Some people choose based on looks – finding out too late that he or she doesn’t like taking a bath often or that she has an extra nipple. Some people choose based on the principles they hold dear like cleanliness, returning things they borrow from each other, going to church every Sunday, or simply chewing with their mouths closed. Some people choose based on their sadistic streak like serial killers looking for their next victim and yet some chooses whoever is convenient for their purposes at the moment. In the end, it is not destiny or the concept of soul mates that makes us feel content or crappy with our current loved ones or with life in general. Water finds its own level and we get exactly what we deserve.
7. Love at First Sight
Love at first sight is more aptly named lust at first sight. After all, only physical attributes are considered in these situations right? For guys who disagree, why then did you start undressing her in your mind the moment you uttered the words? Why load the porn flick programs in your head and start imagining scenarios that starts with a little conversation and rapidly proceeds from GR to R-18 to Triple-X ratings? For girls, why then did you automatically compute the perceived value of his clothes, imagine the stunned reactions of your girl friends while you smugly introduce him around, or extrapolate the most probable volume and density or his muscles based on the bulges that you see on his shirt and pants? And don’t say it was not the looks but the way that you felt when you saw him or her. Those were not feelings but hormones coursing through your body and dopamines pulsing through your brain.
Love, comes months and even years into the relationship – after accepting the fact that he doesn’t flush the toilet bowl whenever he pees, after finding out if your likes and dislikes match, after determining if he or she doesn’t stutter or farts while she talks, after comparing favorite books and movies and a myriad of other quirky things. Calling it love without first determining the above mentioned things is like calling anything in public that is wrapped in a brown paper bag a bomb without first determining if it ticks.
So wake up and hear the music that plays in the background of your mushiest, corniest and God-awful, puke inspiring love moments. What is the soundtrack of your long song driven love life? ^_^
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2 comments:
what tricks? burning nights sounds very much like you buddy! =) good thing i had been miles away when you two were wading desperately through that knee-deep, mushy love mud. argh! =)
darn! that long?!? guess there are heaps of records and valentine cards in YOUR attic, huh? And should I even ask who the mysterious “college boardmate” is? As far as I know, he learned all his tricks from YOU! hahaha
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