There is something about the word “will” and how it is used to ask something of someone else. It lingers on the cusp of forceful, transcendent. I am thinking of this “will you” in the same way I think about the word “let.” A professor once brought my attention to this word biblically: let there be light. And who is doing the letting? Is it the one who has sparked the match? Or the ones who receive it, who do not protest, who acquiesce, who stand idly by, sacrificial organisms in the dark who, in the letting, burn burn burn and collapse, like lovers who cannot bear the magnitude of ascendency, their decay giving birth to new bacteria, to the very concept of naivety, darkness not even a memory, faces now upturned towards their predecessor’s sanctioned light.
I begin with this to leave a taste on your tongue as you read. I want you to have it in your mind first (will you) and talk about it later, as a way to introduce the courage of this word we are here for: romance. Maybe less the word romance. You see, I wrote about it before. I wrote about etymology and usage. I approached it as a term of cultural capital: how women are understood as romanticizing and men are understood as being romantic. I wrote that the present tense of “to be” is here used as a linking verb indicating a state of being based on one or more public actions. A performance. A romantic action means a romantic man which is distinct from the self-referential romantic, who is often understood as a person who values fiction rather than fact. And I wrote about chivalry, too; a medieval military system characterized by “heroic virtuosity with the sword, shield, and lance” (Salem Press). I didn’t write about moments or feelings. I wrote like someone who wanted to sound a certain way. I believe in some of it. But there is no way to understand romance without moments and feelings: I was sitting on the couch with an ex-lover. I was nervous to tell him that I believed in magic, but something came over me, through me, within me: I had to, I was compelled to. I don’t remember what we were watching on the television. But I remember looking at him and at that moment he looked at me. I asked, do you believe in magic? He said well, it’s real, before I even had the chance to articulate myself. His words preceded mine. He preceded me. He could tell what I was thinking. And if I ever had a true narrative experience of form matching content this was it. He said when we speak we create, abracadabra, our cells recognize each other, we are all energy. So to start here, with a moment, with all my little and large feelings, I want to make it clear that romance is, first and always, honesty. Honesty creates the circumstances for romance. There can be no romance without it, no saving grace, no for better or worse, no blissful ignorance, or it’s-for-your-own-good. I would take that moment over every flower arrangement the Kardashian’s have gifted each other, and god help me, I would love for someone to send me one of those. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this as a slight, because I am sure there were moments and feelings involved in that archive. But my argument right now is in favor of honesty over performance; moments over definitions.
As I’ve been writing this piece, I’ve thought to myself: what a terrible time to write about romance. At a time when the things that have poured out of me are sickly and fractured. And here we arrive at my most important thesis, because that’s what romance is, right now and always: an uncontrollable release. I recall a morning a few months ago sitting in the bathtub, the water low and lukewarm. I tried to get up but as I looked down at my skinny naked body I convulsed, I yelped like a child. I said fuck and hunched over, my fists pounding the porcelain, my head tilting back, my teeth grinding, my skin creasing at the eyes. Everything was salty. A few days earlier I told my brother: I’m going to pretend that David Goggins is my roommate. There is no try. You can no longer be nice to yourself. So I got out of the bathtub. I didn’t try to, I just did it slower, with more hunching. I walked to my bedroom and the convulsions came again. I leaned over again. My skinny body again. My nakedness again. I thought back to January when the only way I could orgasm was by repeating the word sorry and imagining lips parting the colour of a fig. Who am I to write of romance?
I’ll tell you. I heard that grief is just love persevering. But I’m telling you that romance is an instinctual release. In this way, romance and grief are lovers, for grief is the thing that holds what we release when there is nobody there to receive it. That’s why grief is so hard to bear, because our natural inclination, especially, but not restricted to, matters of love, is to release, to give away, but we hold grief in our bodies and it doesn’t feel natural to take back what should rightfully be given. Yet this container of grief is circumstantial, negotiable: I want to be clear that romance is a state of being that doesn’t require a recipient in order to be defined as such. And so my body is shaping up again. I’ve been eating lots more. Last night I even worked up the courage to make a steak. I walked to Whole Foods and bought a $20 ribeye. I brought it home and listened to leon bridges, santana, taj mahal while I sliced garlic into discs and then simmered them in oil to make an infusion. While I was peeling the shells I really cried, and then I smiled because I thought, wait garlic doesn’t make people cry, onions do, and I couldn’t tell whether my body mistook the garlic for onions or if I was crying because I remembered watching a man that would do the things in the kitchen for me, for us, that I didn’t want to do. I thought of his back slightly hunched over, eyes keen and intent, firm grip on the santoku, no rush, whereas I always rush to get to the end, but he wouldn’t give me something I wouldn’t be impressed with. That’s care. That’s why I was crying and smiling. I don’t even eat onions; my body definitely would know the difference.
In Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, he writes: “I can assign to love, at least retrospectively, according to my Image-repertoire, a settled course: it is by means of this historical hallucination that I sometimes make love into a romance, an adventure” (197). From this we can all agree that, for Barthes, love is distinct from romance. He even seems to say that it is only in retrospect that we consider our relations romantic, that we make love into a romance, that is to say we romanticize love. And this makes things confusing. Because I think that people understand both definitions at the same time without comprehension: we consider love a “romantic relationship,” yet we also believe in the idea of “romanticizing” qualities or people, which is to say we lay a veil over top of them, we do not truly see them, we are unable to. And in this latter understanding to romanticize is to be false, it is to misunderstand love, or misunderstand our relationships. Who co-opted romance in this way? Who allowed romance to become bastardized, misshapen, false? On the contrary, romance is a way to be more truthful in love. Perhaps it may be understood as creating moments and feelings out of banality. Wong Kar-wai said that, “to me, romantic means you follow your heart more than your mind” and I respectfully understand this notion. To me, however, as a heart/mind sympathizer, romantic means you follow your intuition rather than your pent up ideals. I’ve heard people say: romanticize your life. I say fictionalize it: I’m about to cook dinner, should I play Lauryn Hill and put on a silk dress? Yes, of course I will. Romance does not require a recipient. It is an act of rebellion against everything that has spoken structure into your body: to be romantic with your behavior is in fact less about idealization and more about saying no to the ways in which humans have come to perform banality. I will say no to averting my eyes and yes to staring into yours. I will say no to forks and benches and believe me, I will say yes to my hands and to the grass. Romance is honesty, it is an instinctual release, it is vulnerability: it is an outpouring of personalized will.
Let’s go back to that now because I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been working up to it, the oil in my pan is beginning to bubble. “Will you?” requires the person listening to respond, to use their will. For clarity, I googled the definition of “will” and on the main search page it reads:
the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action
control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one’s own impulses
the thing that one desires or ordains
So you see, romance is in part, or from a particular view, always tied up in sacrifice. I mean this very technically, for to be romantic is to effectively not do something else. The difference, the crux, I suppose, is that romance never feels like a sacrifice. Romance bypasses the sacrificial nature of choosing. And it does so through the faculties of honesty and release. In an interview which I cannot find, writer Jeanette Winterson said “If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.” Will you and let me are the softest sentences I’ve ever had the choking privilege of speaking. Indeed, I am defined as a woman by my sheer bravery in allowing myself to receive the will of another, to let myself fall to my knees in both freedom and bondage.
I remember a time where everyday was, “what should we have for dinner tonight?” And I know that there’s more to life than food. But without food there is no life. And how do I reconcile those two things? Joy Harjo’s poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” opens with the line: “The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.” The unleashing that I speak about, the instinctual release, is also a deep-seeted vulnerability, for it happens often in the body (which is also the mind - but more on that next week); and when I say “the body” I mean prior to analysis, the neurons stored in our skin that go on and on and on without self-critique. This simmering vulnerability, like oil on the cusp of bubbling (you can feel it can’t you?) is freedom. Haven’t you been there before? Hiding a smile behind a glass bottle, watching her kneed, or chop, or glance over at you, or even ask if you will please pass the dish towel. And it happens in the presence of food. God, I think a lot about food. So I’ll be writing a lot about food. It’s niche for me, but it fits under the umbrella of this romance-thesis. The act of feeding someone: could anything be more loving? I mean this in that sense I just mentioned: given to the body prior to analysis, it is romantic because it is a release from our hands, a care, an effort, received and composted by another body prior to analysis. Environments work this way too. I’ve been fantasizing about the release of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. And I’ve been fantasizing about making this very special cookie recipe I discovered on a truly tender instagram account by a girl named Ethaney (@tenderherbs). A digital place where I have found so much synchronicity, less space dividing our states of being, which is, in my opinion, the reason we are drawn towards other humans: the space between us lessens as we allow ourselves to be honest; in this grand allowing synchronicity is the force that reveals us to one another. But I truly mean fantasizing (desire and imagination). Will I make myself these cookies midday on Friday, May 27th, in my favourite cotton shorts, a soft shirt, the skeleton behind my face a river as my eyes widen, my skin flares in goosebumps, the sun (hopefully) pouring in, just me and my socks and my hands and my heart? Yes, before I can even romanticize another sentence. This is why I believe that to romanticize is sure, to be creative with the given circumstances, and if you must say “idealize” then I shall grant that, but idealization is not always what you have been conditioned to think it is. To idealize is not to trick yourself, it is to make yourself, to let yourself, to will yourself closer to the object of your affection: a room, a lover, even your own sensibilities.
I’ve been mulling over what I believe the role of love is in this narrative: is “romantic” love always romantic? Certainly not. A man recently told me that he believes the quintessential ideal of romance is seeing an elderly couple. I told him when I see an elderly couple I think about all the lies they must have told each other. To be clear - cynical is not the opposite of romantic, but I do think opposites help illuminate what you’re trying to get at. What’s not romantic is the curated stuff of “should,” of resentment, of duty. And most importantly, romance mustn't be reduced to an idea that we picked up from something or someone else. So then, what does it mean, practically, to be romantic in love? Is it I must have you? I don’t know what to do with myself? Closer to panic than it is to calm? Well, for one, it is closer to overwhelm than it is to love. I’m sorry, Roland, but it is not retrospective. At times it is ferocious, brief, fleeting. At other times it is reckless, drawn out, a slow-burning candle. But always, it is an honest release. Which means it is practiced individually. I could spend pages giving sweet examples of this but it is not necessary. Perhaps at another time I will, but for my argument now it suffices to say that it is non-negotiably individual. I don’t want to create fluff around the specificities, I do enough of that already. The late artist Hermann Hesse wrote that “there is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.” By allowing my inner world to assert itself, I am able to make real the reason we use language: words are identifiers, but they have great power. The moment you attempt to embody borrowed idealistic circumstances for an expression of love it becomes distilled. I cannot hide that. This isn’t to say that I believe the preparation of dinners, red roses, anniversaries, marriages are not romantic. I’m saying those are negotiable, perhaps accompanying, aspects of romance; they may be included and they may not be. Rather, I am saying that I do not believe the totality of time is enough to constitute romance, because, as I spoke of before, this notion glosses over moments and feelings. It is precisely the idealization I strive to avoid. It is too much to summarize. It is something else altogether. I hope I’ve made my aversion clear.
Now I am reading Mikko Harvey’s poem “Wind-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield.” At the end I lay back against my beautiful couch, my shoulders feel so good against the thick cushions, my legs spread open arms above my head hands clasped like I’m a grown man about to enjoy a tv dinner, an ostensibly unfeminine silhouette, and I shake my head, jesus fucking christ. Looking around my apartment I see the objects of romance all around me. As I define it, I live a very romantic life: kiwis and papaya ripening near the sliding balcony door, wooden desk and armoire - hacked, shapen, stolen, but I must believe they are gifts from trees - sticky notes with words from James Baldwin, Sophocles, William Faulkner, Megan Fernandes, and of course my muse, the gracious erotic stupefying Anaïs Nin. There’s a little wine still on my tongue and it reminds me that whatever I want I can have, and only I get to choose how long it lingers, or if I want another full tannic mouthful, or perhaps nothing at all. And I feel very calm and very honest, the romance inside me was overwhelming so I released it, and now I can feel more building up, I can feel the slow pulse of blood in my neck, slow enough to recognize that right now, I am making my life an artistic activity with moments and feelings.