Today I received news from a very good friend from Scandanavia, let's call him J., that he is breaking up with his partner. I went to their wedding several years ago, it was stunningly beautiful, outdoors, the spicy scent of redwood tress in the air on a beautiful day. I had just arrived from Amsterdam and was only in town for a few days looking for an apartment, but I scheduled my trip so I could attend. This rocks my world, both the wedding and now the breakup.
I think it is because when people publicly commit themselves to another person for life, it just seems so... well, it just seems monumental. Like scaling Mount Everest or exploring the rain forests. When I see my friends doing this I always believe that they are really going to do it this time, that they're going to achieve this huge task and they should totally be revered for doing so. And when I see them fail, it disappoints me.
From my boringly pragmatic perspective I think two people should be together because they want to be together. That's enough, I think. And the people who really stay together do so for that reason, not from setting themselves up for failure by announcing to the world that they're going to be a unit until death. That just sets up a proposition you're bound to lose if for no other reason than just the pressure of living up to it. It seems much more likely to happen if it is allowed to grow naturally, organically, and simply.
I finally saw The Bitter Tears of Petra van Kant. Now here is a woman who was able to bring clarity to relationships, but clarity of a terribly cold and hard nature. She could only be jarred into feeling things through the combination of pain and pleasure in S&M. Maybe it was because of her inability to see relationships "romantically" that forced her to such extremes.
What exactly is the relationship between someone's sexual life and their creative life? How is it that someone like Foucault, from all accounts a man with a terribly active S&M life, could write something as delicate and nuanced as the introduction to The Order of Things. I mean, was he thinking about how to write so beautifully while he was tied up? Did his "masters" ever read his work, and did they know who he was? And how can someone knowingly spank Foucault? I'm sure his experience gave him lots to reflect on concerning the nature of power and how it is simultaneously diffuse and focused, so to speak.
I guess the big question is just what are these divisions between public and private, intimate and creative, sexual and literary, etc. Maybe that's what relationships are for, sort of unifying these worlds, allowing one to show another person all the pieces that make up their crazy universe in its fragmented and confusing entirety. And if for no other reason, maybe that is enough for people to keep trying. After all, several people have climbed Mount Everest. And lived to tell about it.
