break up songs

I recently finished reading Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. Anyone who’s read it will know it’s a journey of pain, though a slow burning, morosely satisfying kind of pain. His exposition of love’s nasty bits is relentless, articulate, and at times achingly beautiful.

“I do not oppose myself to the sensorial world, I let desire circulate within me; on the other hand, I prop it up against “my truth”: my truth is to love absolutely: otherwise, I withdraw, I scatter myself, like an army which abandons a siege.”

Despite all his talk of annulment and disollution, there’s an understanding that if love is the labyrinthine delusion he describes it as, then the delusion itself can be savoured; that is, tasted without ever being consumed.

“The best and most delectable wine, and also the most intoxicating… by which, without drinking it, the annihilated soul is intoxicated, a soul at once free and intoxicated! forgetting, forgotten, intoxicated by what it does not drink and will never drink!”

To get multiple perspectives on the topic, I’ve been listening to Screamin Jay Hawkins. Given that Hawkins apparently fathered somewhere between 55 and 75 children, I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t suffer the same anxiety issues that coloured Roland’s romantic adventures. Despite the obvious differences in style and approach there’s common ground between the two.

Anyone out there keen for a more exhaustive look at the existential intracacies of the break up song should probably listen to this podcast, via Chicago Public Radio’s ‘This American Life’. As part of the program, they wrote a crappy song, called Three of us. There was a remix competition, which needless to say I entered, and didn’t win. Here is my remix, titled Three of us – boring crescendo mix.

Sorry these are such crappy files but I don’t have server space so it’s the best I could do.