Listen to love
I recently collaborated with Audible Australia to record a new essay on the philosophy of love.
Prompted by recent (and sometimes absurd) debates about marriage equality, Audible have partnered with the Equality Campaign to record a free audiobook on love, romance, partnership and intimacy. A sample from my piece:
I rarely gab at the cinema. But these words had me groaning aloud: ‘I'm not a smart man...but I know what love is.’
When Forrest Gump professed his adoration for Jenny over two decades ago, I got it. Honestly. Forrest was devoted: loyal, kind, brave. But his wisdom was maddening, a flat thumbtack of moral certainty with a story spun loosely around it. Come, audience –witness uncomplicated goodness, with all its Hollywood complacency.
But love is complicated. It’s Mr Darcy’s declaration, Marcel Proust’s frustration, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s masturbation; Paris and Helen, Achilles and Patroclus, Narcissus and Narcissus; Slim telling Steve how to whistle in To Have and Have Not, and Mia’s ambiguous smile in La La Land as she leaves Sebastian’s jazz club.
It’s Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer, Captain America and Bucky, Midnighter and Apollo; Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ and 2 Live Crew’s ‘Me So Horny’; oxygen and poison, battlefield and roller-coaster, addiction and bad medicine, god and devil – and always more, in rhymes, marble and pirouettes; in lips and fists and loins; in light fantasy and dense fact.
You can download "Listen to Love" here.