I wrote the following and originally posted it to Facebook on 12 February, 2022. Since it's Valentine's Day, I felt compelled to revisit it. NOTE: This flashback contains another flashback. Hope you can keep up--I've tried to space them apart accordingly...
As many of you will probably remember, there was a predecessor to these weekly rants. It wasn't as public, but I would email a song a week to family and friends. In February of 2008, in the very second installment of those weekly rants, I wrote the following:
"What came first—the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?
"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives."
—Rob Fleming in the novel "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby
So a couple years ago I was thumbing through the Encyclopædia Britannica because I wanted to know the origins of this Cupid chap who is supposed to be flying around this week. He's Roman, in case you didn't know (I didn't at the time, which is why I was looking him up in the first place). He apparently enjoys archery and he's a menace to our society. Britannica says that his "wounds inspired love or passion in his every victim." "WOUNDS???" "VICTIM???" He's hunting human prey, for crying out loud! Clearly this guy is a terrorist and needs to be stopped at all costs! We need to ship his wing-ed little ass off to Guantánamo and find out what his real agenda is!
As you may have guessed (if you didn't already know), I find Valentine's Day a disgusting and crass holiday. Even in the days when I had a girlfriend, I still wasn't that fond of it (although I will admit that it was a lot more fun). I don't understand the concept of it, personally. Some poor schlub gets his head lobbed off and I'm supposed to be romantic about it? "Y'know, honey, we can go out to dinner and a movie anytime. Tonight, why don't we watch someone get martyred?" I don't know about the rest of you, but I certainly get hot just thinking about someone's decapitation. Valentine's Day—Bah! Humbug!
Which brings me to love itself. Can there be anything as screwed up as this emotion? I find it thoroughly fascinating that while love is the antithesis of hate, it can be just as destructive—just ask Helen of Troy. Or Shakespeare. Or Leonard Cohen... The only good thing to come out of it (aside from the continuation of the species, I suppose—which is a diatribe for another time) is what it does to us creatively. Just ask Shakespeare. Or Leonard Cohen...
Our species has created plays, paintings, movies, stories, and, yes, literally thousands of songs according to Rob Fleming (or Rob Gordon if you're a fan of the movie), devoted to love. One could make the argument that the entire entertainment industry was built upon the ideas of love and romance. Hugh Grant alone owes his entire career to it!
So here I am/we are—fourteen years later—and my opinion hasn't changed all that much on these matters. I still have difficulty uttering the phrase "Valentine's Day" without a hint of derision in my voice, sometimes with an obscene hand gesture. Having recently described myself on a friend's Facebook post as "perpetually single," I feel entitled to piss on everyone's romantic parade every February 14. I figure I atone for it by being a hopeless romantic the rest of the year... or maybe I'm just hopeless, the jury's still out on that one. Every Valentine's Day, I still feel compelled to dress as though I were going to Johnny Cash's funeral and referring to myself as "The Anti-Cupid," commanding people to kneel before me and sing Roy Orbison songs (although I was once described as "hot" in that suit, which led me to wear it to an erotic masquerade ball in 2004... but that's a very long story). And to top it all off, my taste in music has had the audacity to broaden itself in the intervening years, making my familiarity with depressing songs even... well, broader.
Picking a whole album for this week wasn't terribly tricky. Between the aforementioned Leonard Cohen and Roy Orbison, there's a lot to choose from. But in the end, there was really only one choice. As Bruno Kirby said in the movie This Is Spinal Tap, "When you've loved and lost the way Frank has, then you, uh... you know what life's about."
So this week, if you're as bitter about institutionalized romance as I am—or even if you're not, I present to you the Chairman of the Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Francis Albert Sinatra with his 1959 album (probably not a special Valentine's Day release, but you never know...), No One Cares.
Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverend Will the Thrill
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