“Beauty and Crime” is like prophecy to me. Thanks Suzanne. It is true that it brought me some kind of sadness and worry. Love. Yes, love. Three song and three quotes.

“Love is only thing that matters.

Love is the only thing that’s real”

“She says its not enough to be in love

Not enough to be in love
Not enough to be in love”

“Cause in the struggle for survival
Love is never blind”

Which one is eternal, please tell me which one...

Anna Maria K. 

in a way they all are eternal, anna, because even if love ("to be in love") might not be enough and might cast a questioning eye over our "routine operations", there's an inescapable truthfulness about it that makes it the only thing that matters, the only thing that's real.

love, fátima

let me make my thoughts clearer. as suzanne wrote in her haiku, when she was very young, love is not all peaceful, it can be quite fierce. but it is still love in its truthfulness. when love is accepted like that (even its limitations), and we accept ourselves like that, in all our strengths and weaknesses, seeing within and beyond what we know, then love will remain in us and through us and it will remain truthful.

this truthfulness is love's shot at eternity. but we are like a "rusted pipe" most of the time. we don't allow love's truth to really flow and stay within us.

much love, fátima

Oh Fatima, such jewels of wisdom you drop.  Spoken by somebody who has truly truly truly loved (and probably truly truly truly hurt because true lovers experience true hurt) in her lifetime thus far.

Thank you, also, for reminding me, through your eloquence and perceptions and insight, of how broadly encompassing love can be - not just the good feelings but also the bad, and not just the peaceful feelings but also the not-so-peaceful feelings.  When I (and I'm sure others can relate) become hurt and rejected and such, I think that my feelings of longing and limerence and hurt and even hate are merely flaws that are fodder for analysis and diagnosis by a mental health professional, however the truth also remains that they are real and fairly universal and understandable, and to view them exclusively as pathological and personality flaws is pretty reductive thinking.

Although "Ludlow Street" rivals "Anniversary" as the most moving song on "Beauty & Crime" (for me, anyway) as well as just about any other song I've ever heard (the first time I listened to it at work, I had a very hard time not breaking down and crying), I sometimes feel ashamed when listening to it because the feeling of Suzanne's singing and the feeling of the musicality of the song evoke, to me, a love for a departed one (specifically, in this case, Suzanne's dead brother Time) that seem to be of a purity and positivity that I usually, if ever, am not able to feel regarding my own dead sibling Brandi, who is usually who I feel and think about whenever I listen to this song.  So it was especially refreshing and reassuring for me to hear one so wise as yourself, Fatima, respond in this way to Anku's query, especially seeing as Anku voiced almost exactly the very question that I've been asking myself several times since I started listening to "Ludlow Street", in particular. 

 One of my favourite poets had a poem that I think is one of the very best ever summations of love.  Here it is:

Love understands the mystery, whereof
  We can but spell a surface history:
Love knows, remembers:  let us trust in love:
  Love understands the mystery.

  Love weighs the event, the long pre-history,
Measures the depth beneath, the height above,
  The mystery, with the ante-mystery.

To love and to be grieved befits a dove
  Silently telling her bead-history:
Trust all to Love, be patient and approve:
  Love understands the mystery.

from "Verses" by Christina Rossetti
circa 1880s or early 1890s

milo, you don't have to thank me, but i thank *you* for the courage in sharing your thoughts and feelings. and thanks also for the beautiful poem.

wendy, thanks for the interview with suzanne. it came at just the right time.

and anna, that impersonal love suzanne talks about lives in every corner, in every street. and i know you know that and have the vision to recognize it.

much love to all, fátima

"Songs, like love, have an amazing power to heal and destroy. That's because songs, like love, are loaded with time; time that moves along even though you are unaware of the movement. But songs, unlike love, can be programmed or manipulated or otherwise avoided."

-- Joe Puleo, yo la tengo's tour manager, in the booklet of their collection "prisoners of love"

Fatima:

What is this whole Divide/Wisdom thing?  What is that from?  At the end of the movie "Don't Come Knockin'" directed/produced by Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard and starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Sarah Polley, Eva Marie Saint, etc., the very last shot shows a highway marker in Nevada showing the # of miles to "Wisdom" and the # of miles to "Divide" as if they were towns (maybe they are).  I figured it was supposed to be some sort of statement, but now I can see that it's a reference to something.  Can you please enlighten me?

-Milo/Will

 

milo, you're right: the 'Divide 1 Wisdom 52' comes from the wenders film you mention. judging from other films of his made in america, i believe it does refer to the # of miles to these towns. i also believe it's not a random shot, especially being the very last one of the movie. you could say it's a kind of statement but not an overt reference to anything, as far as i know. i may have used it as one, but that's because it made sense as such to me.

that being said, i personally feel it works as a cryptic reference to the film "paris, texas" (also directed by wenders from a shepard script). just like in the title of that film there's a split and a reunion that they both summon all at once and which is at the very core of these two road movies, where life journeys, time and love unfold. you could write paris/texas just like you have written divide/wisdom, because there is indeed a slash, but the comma and the numbers work as a possibility of proximity and togetherness (farther or even remote in the first case, closer in the second).

but then again this is just my interpretation.

love, fátima

ps: i guess i should also mention that i was struck by the two meanings (diverse and yet concomitant) the first part, 'Divide 1', can have. divide as in split up, separate, and divide as in distribute, share. in both cases, it's just a mile away. and furthermore if you divide anything by 1 (just one) you're really stuck, you're going nowhere.

I have been enjoying reading this thread and it makes me curious about how others view/experience/qualify love and any differences/similarities when speaking about loving other being as compared to love of non-living aspects of life.  As in love of  beauty or art or concepts or country or nature or philosophy or any other item that might stir our hearts.  For me, there is a difference.

peace,  ra 

Hi Fatima,

  So well put, as usual.  Hummm... rather unconditional, the way you have put it.  As to beauty, nature, resonance -- I completely agree.  Passively we can entwine with these natural elements.Yet when it comes to people, and all our creations, be they noble or not, love seems to require more.  I know we hear about unconditional love re: humans, and perhaps it is just my own history or constitution, but I am not sure that I have ever experienced that with another human.  It makes me wonder how other animals experience love. Do they question their experiences?  I was once fortunate to have spent a few years with an acting troupe of elephants, and I am certain that they experience and thoughtfully share love.  I wonder if they swoon over a perfect blue sky or the harmonic sounds of a trickling brook.  Hummm....

peace,  Ra