Saturday, November 12, 2011

Love: lie or worthwhile



Love is just a lie, made to make you blue,” cries Nazareth’s singer, Dan McCafferty, with a whinny, agonizing tone in his voice; and it is obvious that McCafferty feels what he’s singing about, and that there’s no remedy for his ailment. And just like his case, history is so populated with people who were as unfortunate or worse when pricked by the sting of love; which kind of makes me wonder: is love really worth it?  Because love can get you really bad if it catches you off guard. It doesn’t matter how though you think you are; love is no respecter of persons.
     I mean, you should see McCafferty’s face: he looks just like a real vicious, ruthless ex-convict with no feelings... And the way he screams on some of his songs. But there he is crying in his beer over love.  
     Another sad case is Ozzy Osbourne, the diabolic madman, who was famous for the satanic paraphernalia displayed in his shows and --especially-- for biting the heads off doves and bats and spitting them out, while showing his face to the audience with blood still dripping from his lips. But as horripilate as he presents himself, his vulnerability to the tricks of love has been obvious in songs like “So Tired” and “Goodbye to Romance,” which also attests to the fact that love will stink when you’re not careful, even if you’re called the “Godfather of Heavy Metal.”
     And who’s not familiar with Samson’s story of seduction-betrayal, where the mighty man felt untouchable and never cared for anybody or anything, and who lived to do whatever he pleased?  Well, it happened to him also; what he thought it was only lust turned out to be an affection of a deeper kind. After he had a piece of Delilah he found himself helplessly enamored, like never before in his life. To the point that he even confided his most precious secret to her: the source of his strength, which made him so powerful and sexy. 
      And everybody knows the rest of the story: he proposed; they got married; he got a job flipping burgers because now he had a family to support and he didn’t know a trade. Besides, with his criminal record there’s no way he was going to get anything more decent… Actually, it was worse than that: he lost all his strength because Delilah chopped off what it was the source of it (sorry, but it’s not what some of you are thinking): his hair. After that he wasn’t but a wimp that was easily bullied and subdued by anybody; and what else can be worse for a man than that? 
     There is also the case of Napoleon Bonaparte, the little giant whose military prowess has no parallel in history and who also symbolizes the vindication of the little man. He was in charge of thousands of men who would obey the minutest of orders coming out of his mouth and execute them to the most minimum detail.  But there was one thing he was never in charge of: his wife Josephine. He had a huge heart and he fell in love; so much in love that his wife got him to like her even without taking showers. To the point that every time when he was returning from campaign he would send her instructions not to bath for a couple of days, because that turned him on and it became his fetish. She cheated on him and at home she called the shots. She would say, “jump” and he’d ask, “how high?”
     And I could go on and on with stories about the trickiness of love and how much things can get out of hand when you give in so senselessly to it. But we have to admit that with love not everything is about agony and pain, because there are also some “happy endings” where the person loved and didn’t have to suffer the offense. Like singer Chris Brown who, in a fit of jealousy, was able to reclaim his honor by beating the snot out of his girlfriend Rihanna, on behalf of all the men whose hearts have been broken --in the name of love-- by those “sadistic,” cold-blooded women.   
     So, don’t be afraid to try it yourself, and don’t let anybody tell you, because it’s you who decides ultimately if love works for you or not. You might endorse it or disown it; but whatever you do, don’t show all your cards and, as the song goes: “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.”

 Note: This article appeared originally on a now defunct online magazine, and I wrote it on account of Valentine’s Day.



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