pantimes 06 flirting with the erotes

Love. All you need is. Make. Fall in. 

From the PanTimes talk on 06 May:

The previous week had brought little relief to the those who have cabin fever. The government had not so much ‘eased the lockdown’, as to let us know that the future of state control is present. Imagine being told that books are not an essential need. Or sitting outside. Or ritual cleansing.

Over the past weeks, in these talks, we have discussed different elements of the pandemic and lockdown, as viewed through the lens of mythology and psychology. We have spoken about pathology, the sacrifice of innocence, holding ourselves ‘in’ as we deepen, and the boundaries between worlds. And in the last talk, we offered some reflections on death. That is a vast subject and it was our intention to open your imagination to a few images of death and dying. To view death psychically is already a radical shift.

So what about another Big Subject? Let us consider love, since everyone agrees that no one knows what love is, or how to define it. Although sometimes, poetry, art and music make us feel that the artist is sharing something about love that we also experience.

We are more interested in the sort of love that takes hold of you with beauty, and with terror, shatters your complacency, makes you crazy, and holy, and crude, and ecstatic. Where you feel elated, desperate, elegant, childish, and creative and destructive all at once. And fearful and fragmented, and yet not asking anything more. The Bible says God is love. Mythology says love is blind. Plato calls love a divine madness. Some say love is a disease that enters the body through the eyes. The poet says there is no cure for love.

Erotic intimacy might make us do almost anything to attain the object, or subject, of our desire. It could be a god or a person. And yet, sometimes, when we attain what we want, love leaves, and we fall out of love. So what does the soul want from us in these adventures?

here is the link to get to re-view this talk