En direct de St. John's University, Jamaica, New York...

THE SMALRUS WEB SITE v. 7.0

Midterm Presentation- 1/18/00- What is love?

Was originally going to talk about the shamefulness of sex as my topic, but recent developments in my own life in the past week encouraged me to change topics.-More obscure-Less this way vs. that way sort of topic-more grey area all around.

Question: What is love?

Song by Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins- Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Violin accompaniment by Mr. Nikhil Bramhavar

Ups and downs in the keys. Minor notes and major notes. Tries to draw emotion out of the listener. Repetition often times. That's where you get the infiniteness of love and also the song.

Assumption: Love isn't only a feeling, but an emotion in the literal sense as well- emotion being an expression of feeling.

I think: you can feel love but not have to be emotional about it. Death in the Family- Mary and Jay's love as husband and wife. What creates that love? They don't always need to be expressive of it. She still cooks him his breakfast even though she doesn't need to be expressive. Not have to be physical. But for me, that is what makes them love each other, not just be in love.

First I have to give some background on what my knowledge of love prior to this exploration, and the types of love I tried to use in broadening my understanding of what love is:

Mr. Harak's class last year- Greek Loves- Eros, Phillia, Agape

Agape Love- unconditional love. you don't have to do something and/or someone doesn't have to do anything for you to make you feel good. like a mankind love just because. or a, as mr. harak puts it, "I love cheeseburgers," sort of love.

Erotic Love (stemmed from Eros)- conditional love. "I love you because you're the fastest runner...I love you because you look good with your hair up...I love you because I can relate to you on a personal level..." Intimate relationship in my eyes-spawns some sort of physical relationship? seems to be the majority of works we've read

Phillial Love- brotherly love- Philadelphia- "city of brotherly love"- platonic friends love

authors write in a fine line between loves- FGT- Ruth and Idgie as friends go through hell and back together. that's philial love. courtroom scene- Prosecutor: "why did you leave with idgie threadgoode (when they escaped frank)" and Ruth says, "Because she's the best friend I ever had and I love her." at the same time, jon avnet leaves that thin line between philial love and erotic love- the picnic and the beecharmer and idgies costuming. shades of homosexuality...

as opposed to one flew over the cuckoo's nest with mcmurphy and the whores. who are looking purely at erotic love in trying to get women. if there's an infiniteness of love, this is the oppositeness of it. if love is supposed to last forever, then one night stands is not love. or at least not true love

in the song, there's a unification between goods and bads, happy and sads, major and minor keys that brings out the emotion. as if that thin line wavers back and forth in the repetition such as ruth and idgies relationship.

but in brave new world, you have a society that feels no love whatsoever. there is no society with love in that book. how do you justify a society without love? all of the subtleties are missing...a question you can't answer because the only society we know is one where love in some form exists between all men

where I researched greek love was on a web site on marriage and fixing the kinks in the "loving relationship"

hanson song- "where's the love, its not enough, it makes the world go round and round..." back to idgie and ruth and mary and jay- love in death and grief

but look at the sun also rises, no such thing for jake as being able to have a physical relationship with a girl because of his impotency due to the war. he still some feels some agape love for her. but he realizes that he can never have an erotic love with her.

impotency feels like the minor key, but there's a hope that you can reconcile love...find a middle ground.

Who do I love? There are people that I feel one sort of love for and people I feel multiple sorts of love for...

I think true love is- person who you can carry on w/physical, social, emotional aspects...in order for it to happen, there has to be elements of the 3 types of love to be involved for lasting relationship. You don't want to be with a person if you keep finding faults. Play on perfections and imperfections as well. Case in point being in the feeding off each other of Ruth and idgie. Play off the subtleties of the person.

Such as the usage of the violin in the piece. because much of the piano line is repetitive. but the violin adds to the piece, not only enriching, but changing the emotional tone of it

The song shows the variances of tempo, pitch, volume...dynamics in general...add to the dimensions of a song and a person as well. makes you think how you love that person. Love is felt on an individual basis. We find what we're attracted to for that person.

Billy and Risa- Lusty relationship was the only form of love- but "whenever I saw risa in daylight, in public, it was as if she were a wholly different person, her sister, maybe, or a cousin, who only resembled in vague ways the woman I was having an affair with." p. 41 that's because he didn't know risa for anything but her body...not much substance to true love

Love and who you love is individual. I love different people as friends but based on the qualities I see in them as people. But there are people that have qualities that I think I could say that I could love as more than just friends. But its not like I'm keeping a scorecard of qualities when I look at a person.

Love is something you cant say if its right to love that person or if its wrong to love that person. You love the person because you do.