They Don’t Love You Like I Love You
The small miracles keep you going which actually makes them big, in the scheme of things. In the despairing times that are now, these awful news reports and the endless onslaught of dehumanizing defeat and death, I am looking for a brief, sunlit moment that will illuminate me from within so that I can be a beacon of light for just a second, to help another look for a lost contact lens, or a lost life.
I have found it. The Apple music store shows videos! They can be downloaded and watched over and over again, and the one I am unable to stop playing on my computer screen is “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s my favorite song right now, and the magnetic charm of the lead singer Karen O, singing the sadly happy refrain “they don’t love you like I love you,” is the hook that catches on my mouth. I am singing along, even though my voice will never have her lush, burgundy tones. It doesn’t matter. Beauty like this is for everyone and meant to be shared.
The video is fairly simple, focusing most of the camera lens on Karen’s face, shrouded in the black drama of her shag haircut. The song passionately plays on as she rocks harder and the sweat from her brow starts to make passages through the mystery of her bangs, and slowly, her exquisite face is revealed. At a critical point, awash with the love that she has that no one else has for the unseen lover, a luminous beam, like a lighthouse flash, slowly passes from underneath her chin to the top of her head. That second of perfect, omnipotent human glory - the soul for once instead of the eyes - seeing - is all I need to remember that after all, the world, and life itself, is good. Better than good. No matter what else is going on, outside, inside.
“They don’t love you like I love you.” I think of all who might apply to this sweet yet profoundly barren declaration, and there are so many. Here are a few:
There is a man I will see soon, who waits for me, who is always there, who cares for me, coaxes me to eat and sleep because I forget but he never does, no matter how far I fly away, with whom I share everything but time, hours, days, weeks - what I wish I had more of;
The black dog and the blonde dog, and the regal tiny visitor dog/princess who arrives some months, when the queen mother is away, who are impolite and ill-mannered in varied and surprisingly adorable ways, as they have been raised to believe that they are children and not pets, who eat at the table, and allow us to sleep in their beds, who surround me in slumber so that I will not leave them again, as I always do, as I always must;
A sweet friend in sunny London, heroically rebuilding her life, brick by brick, who I can feel smiling as I write this;
An old friend, one I want to see all the time, but somehow never do, who never fails to send me into gasping, paralyzing fits of laughter no matter how much time and tide has passed between us;
The gentle and remarkable husband and wife, bound to one another by blissful, overwhelming joy, but remain separated by walls of steel, glass and injustice, who listen to my DVD together over a payphone, so they can laugh, like they are sitting in the same room, like they are right next to each other;
My mother, who gets stronger every day, feeling better than ever.
“They don’t love you like I love you.”