Valentine
I've always loved Valentine's day. I don't know why.
Maybe because it's really a commemoration; a study in guilt and loss and lack, a meditation on lovelessness. Or perhaps, like other self-defined tuff nuts who parade themselves around the place, I'm just a secret romantic who'd do anything for love.
The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between; the tension between desire and disappointment fills me with grandiose longing and melancholy glee. I hate the Hallmark fiction of crypto-capitalist romance (o damp styrofoam, o pink nylon pantyhose) but I'm all for the grand design of the human heart and the redemptive power of love on a microcosmic and/or metaphysical scale.
For many years now I've made a point of celebrating Valentine's day in a public capacity. It feels like the only right thing to do, like working the soup kitchen for the homeless at Christmas. When I was nineteen, my lover and I stole a pair of Salvation Army jackets and wore them down to the main square, where we handed out chocolates and pamphlets saying LOVE EXISTS in five languages. I'm sure glad it was never documented, but I'm happy to remember it all the same. The following year I made 200 numbered prints and raced around town on my bike putting them in all the free postcard racks, with an accompanying sticker that read: THIS IS JUST TO SAY THAT SOMEONE LOVES YOU: NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
This is the only surviving print in the series.
The year after that, I went around town with a red aerosol and sprayed this stencil on every wall I could find:
Some years later I decided I would celebrate the pain and the glory of Valentine's day by getting tattooed. The tattooist chased me out of his shop and told me to come back in a few days when I was sober. I followed his advice. He made me some sketches, based on my stipulations; these are dated February 19th.
I never did get that tattoo.
Somebody else did, though.
This shoulder belongs to my friend Jeremy; Valentine's Day, 2006.
Some years later, in another city, I was living in a big house with five other people. After a long hard winter, we got together and agreed that - whatever else was going on in our [love] lives - we really loved one another and all of our friends. So we threw a party: a St. Valentine's speakeasy in our front room.
[I'm the one in the striped t-shirt. I'm wearing that T-shirt now.]
In the summer of that year I got very sick and lost the ability to speak for a few months. It was a strange experience and a lonely one. During that time I sent a message to all my ex-lovers, asking them to call my telephone and leave a message. Any time of the day or night, I said; anything you'd like to say - I promise I won't pick up the phone.
Many of them did.
I wasn't sure why I'd asked for the messages, and then I didn't know what to do with them - until one Valentine's day, putting together a mixtape in a state of mild existential heartbreak, I put them all together and made a song.
This year, I had a few beers after a long day and went out on my bike with my paint-markers and aerosol - and a fresh lamb's heart. I'd planned to nail it to a wall and write "AIN'T NOTHING PRETTY ABOUT A TRUE HEART." But exhaustion and rain and street art don't mix, and the sirens went off when I brought the hammer out. I don't think it would have looked that great anyway, and it might have freaked people out, which was only a small part of what I wanted to do. But sometimes you have to try out an idea to know that it's a bad one. In this respect - and many others - ideas are [like] love affairs, and vice versa.
Fortunately, though, I've lined up another Valentine's day present. It's one of my favourite love stories, moreso for being an unlikely one. It's a film that seems to be about death, but is really all about life at its most curious, visceral - and temporary. Perhaps that's why I like Valentine's day so much: I've searched high and wide, through books and in bottles and all over bodies, and as far as I can see, love - the bio-deterministic chemical cocktail that causes so much trouble and tenderness - is all there really is. Love for another person, for several people, for all people; love for an idea, for an ideal, for an animal, for life itself [etcaetera]. I'm going to stop now, lest I become too sentimental - a side effect of too little sleep. Friends, lovers, strangers, I give you:
Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971).
Here it is.
Be my Valentine; be your own Valentine; be anybody's Valentine; be everybody's Valentine.
Until next year,
much love.
xxx JD
Maybe because it's really a commemoration; a study in guilt and loss and lack, a meditation on lovelessness. Or perhaps, like other self-defined tuff nuts who parade themselves around the place, I'm just a secret romantic who'd do anything for love.
The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between; the tension between desire and disappointment fills me with grandiose longing and melancholy glee. I hate the Hallmark fiction of crypto-capitalist romance (o damp styrofoam, o pink nylon pantyhose) but I'm all for the grand design of the human heart and the redemptive power of love on a microcosmic and/or metaphysical scale.
For many years now I've made a point of celebrating Valentine's day in a public capacity. It feels like the only right thing to do, like working the soup kitchen for the homeless at Christmas. When I was nineteen, my lover and I stole a pair of Salvation Army jackets and wore them down to the main square, where we handed out chocolates and pamphlets saying LOVE EXISTS in five languages. I'm sure glad it was never documented, but I'm happy to remember it all the same. The following year I made 200 numbered prints and raced around town on my bike putting them in all the free postcard racks, with an accompanying sticker that read: THIS IS JUST TO SAY THAT SOMEONE LOVES YOU: NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
This is the only surviving print in the series.
The year after that, I went around town with a red aerosol and sprayed this stencil on every wall I could find:
Some years later I decided I would celebrate the pain and the glory of Valentine's day by getting tattooed. The tattooist chased me out of his shop and told me to come back in a few days when I was sober. I followed his advice. He made me some sketches, based on my stipulations; these are dated February 19th.
I never did get that tattoo.
Somebody else did, though.
This shoulder belongs to my friend Jeremy; Valentine's Day, 2006.
Some years later, in another city, I was living in a big house with five other people. After a long hard winter, we got together and agreed that - whatever else was going on in our [love] lives - we really loved one another and all of our friends. So we threw a party: a St. Valentine's speakeasy in our front room.
[I'm the one in the striped t-shirt. I'm wearing that T-shirt now.]
In the summer of that year I got very sick and lost the ability to speak for a few months. It was a strange experience and a lonely one. During that time I sent a message to all my ex-lovers, asking them to call my telephone and leave a message. Any time of the day or night, I said; anything you'd like to say - I promise I won't pick up the phone.
Many of them did.
I wasn't sure why I'd asked for the messages, and then I didn't know what to do with them - until one Valentine's day, putting together a mixtape in a state of mild existential heartbreak, I put them all together and made a song.
This year, I had a few beers after a long day and went out on my bike with my paint-markers and aerosol - and a fresh lamb's heart. I'd planned to nail it to a wall and write "AIN'T NOTHING PRETTY ABOUT A TRUE HEART." But exhaustion and rain and street art don't mix, and the sirens went off when I brought the hammer out. I don't think it would have looked that great anyway, and it might have freaked people out, which was only a small part of what I wanted to do. But sometimes you have to try out an idea to know that it's a bad one. In this respect - and many others - ideas are [like] love affairs, and vice versa.
Fortunately, though, I've lined up another Valentine's day present. It's one of my favourite love stories, moreso for being an unlikely one. It's a film that seems to be about death, but is really all about life at its most curious, visceral - and temporary. Perhaps that's why I like Valentine's day so much: I've searched high and wide, through books and in bottles and all over bodies, and as far as I can see, love - the bio-deterministic chemical cocktail that causes so much trouble and tenderness - is all there really is. Love for another person, for several people, for all people; love for an idea, for an ideal, for an animal, for life itself [etcaetera]. I'm going to stop now, lest I become too sentimental - a side effect of too little sleep. Friends, lovers, strangers, I give you:
Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971).
Here it is.
Be my Valentine; be your own Valentine; be anybody's Valentine; be everybody's Valentine.
Until next year,
much love.
xxx JD
posted by JD at
17:21
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