Annie Ernaux's "Simple Passion"

 

I really enjoyed the narrative of “Simple Passion”. It was frank and honest. Many times, when people speak or write about love or love affairs, they are not very candid. Ernaux mentions that she feels that writing should mirror “the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement.” Yet, this is a tall order to fill. It seems as if people are constantly holding back their exact and perhaps indescribable feeling and thoughts. So how do you transform writing into something that evokes the same impressions as sex? Ernaux writes, “I do not wish to explain my passion- that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify- I just want to describe it.” Which she indeed does, but maybe this is a hurdle that many people can’t overcome.

It is easy for people to feel that their thoughts, urges, feelings, and actions- especially in retrospect- were ridiculously uncharacteristic of them and inexplicable. Reading “Simple Passion” made me think about how much better so many stories about love would be if we got to hear the gritty, tumultuous, real emotions of the characters. Not the pretty, “the smell of her hair”, “the color of his eyes”, “I think about him all the time”, “I dream about her every night” drab that is so present in most literature, but the true, unflattering and incomprehensible thoughts of people deep in love. But, I can’t help but wonder if people can ever really escape the face-saving behavior that prevents them from being completely honest with the thoughts and urges going on inside their head when they desire someone. This could be a part of the reason why people fear homosexuality and transexuality or any type of sexuality that isn’t the “norm”. The labels themselves are ways to explain away urges that people don’t want to come to terms with. If people were more honest and open with the complexities of their desires, they might find solidarity in it.

        Ernaux has showed that, as is true with many of the character we read about in class, desire is all consuming. It affected every aspect of her life. But the greatest thing that Ernaux’s story shows is that it was almost entirely self inflicted. I’m starting to think that desire is unlike love in that involves only the self; one single person interacts with the feelings (brought on by another person) within themselves. Yet, having love without desire is like having a car without gas.

"Love, Love, Love" by As Tall As Lions

Lyrics:

Have I ever told you before
I think you're beautiful when you're sleeping?
I have faith you watch me in my slumber, too.
If I'm all that you're looking for,
tell me, why is there a river streaming
down your face?
Sometimes makes me wonder
all about you
love, love, love.

After some time it's something i find true. 
Love's not a grave, it won't decay on you.
So many days I was afraid of love.

What if nothing is just that and
suffering's the only thing we're good at?
Dreaming, picture that a whole world in a slumber.
But don't get too attached to the living,
even every single memory's fleeting.
That's a fact, being torn asunder.
But to my surprise, no reason
why, one day I woke up and realized.

After some time it's something i find true. 
Love's not a grave, it won't decay on you.
Too many days I was afraid of love, love, love, love, love..

Give it to me,
love, love, love, love.
Give it to me,
love, love, love, love.
I'll keep you in my focus with love and affection.
I'll keep you in my focus with love and affection.
I'll keep you in my focus with love and affection.

The song starts with the question, “Have I ever told you before I think you're beautiful when you're sleeping?” I always thought that this was interesting because usually when people describe the person they love in songs they talk about the way they do things or the way they move. Here, the singer is admiring his lover in her sleep, but it is more than just her sleeping face that he’s admiring. A person is perfect when they are sleeping because they can be everything that you want them to be, they don't speak or do things that would ruin your image of them. They are just lying there, beautifully.

The very next line of the song is sung in the background, “I have faith you watch me in my slumber, too.”  Because this line is almost hard to catch if you aren't listening closely, the meaning changes slightly here. The singer was very confident in his feelings for his lover, but it seems that his feelings might be somewhat unrequited because he says “I have faith”. He doesn't know for sure whether or not his lover is reciprocating his feelings at the same depth as his. He also uses the word “slumber” which is a much stronger word than sleep. It makes it seem that he is so enraptured with his dreams of her that he isn't just asleep; he is in a deep impenetrable “slumber”, reluctant to wake.

But, further in the song he goes on to say “But to my surprise, no reason why, one day I woke up and realized...”. Eventually, he wakes up from this dream, this fantasy he's had of his lover and the love that they share and begins to see the reality of love. He sings “Love's not a grave, it won't decay on you.” He is saying that love isn't a sorrowful place to visit, like a grave. Past loves shouldn't be seen as something you lock away in a cemetery with the fear that if you don’t it will always haunt you. He realizes that love isn't something to constantly fear even though it can sometimes be a scary thing. 
I really like this song because it asks you to wake up from this fantasy you have of the person you love. If you're in love someone, don't love them from within the safety of your dreams and fantasies because you fear the outcome of your feelings. Just love. "Every single memory's fleeting", so if you don't love them for them as opposed to who you imagine them to be, you will completely lose track of who they actually are.

I think this song speaks to what we've learned from many of the books we've read for class. There were many characters who were afraid of love, or fled from it. There were even characters who refused to see the reality of their relationship and, instead, indulged in their own fantasies. Madame Bovary, for example, was unable to see how uncommitted Rodolphe was in their relationship because she was so caught up in the excitement of the rebelliousness of the affair itself. Ricardo refused to let go of his mysterious fantasy of the Bad Girl, even after meeting her father and learning about her childhood. Many characters seem to fear the reality of the person they love or even having one constant love, as if their feelings will grow to fade or “decay”.

The Bad Girl (Week Two)

Ricardo isn’t all good, in the same way that the Bad Girl isn't all bad. Sure, he always followed  the rules and did what was asked of him, but within the framework of his relationship with the Bad Girl, I don't think he was the saint that his friends make him out to be.He loved passionately, but he also loved selfishly. The roles reversed slightly during the second half of the novel. At the beginning, Ricardo seemed the victim of fate. He was destined to always love a woman who wouldn't love him back. Yet, as the story progressed, I found myself feeling less and less sorry for Ricardo. It was always about him and what the Bad Girl was doing to him and how much he suffered, when there was clearly something wrong within the Bad Girls psyche.There was something not quite right with the Bad Girl from the beginning-- her lies and escapism-- and this was proven when she is hospitalized for the physical and mental abuse that she encountered with Fukuda. Perhaps the most alarming thing about the whole ordeal was that she wanted the relationship that she had with Fukuda. And, although her childhood situation is explained a little at the very end of the story (and we finally find out what happened to her sister!) there are still many aspects of the Bad Girl that are left a mystery.
Ricardo loved the Bad Girl in the best way that he knew how, but there were still some things that the Good Boy did that I found to be, for irony's sake, bad. Whenever he met up with the Bad Girl he had an unrealistic illusion of how she was going to be. He would slip into denial about what kind of person she really was and he'd tell himself that this time things would be different while being paranoid and neurotic the entire time. So, of course she would always disappoint him, always be the bad girl. How could she not? She was always just herself and Ricardo could never learn his lesson.
I found it to be absurd that the doctor had to tell Ricardo not to have sex with the Bad Girl after her operation. Why would you even have to say it?, I thought to myself. Why would Ricardo have sex with someone he treasures who just went through so much sexual trauma? Besides, just a few pages ago he was saying how he doesn't really need sex. Evidently I was wrong. Ricardo did a mediocre job at controlling himself-- he couldn't even wait the entire two months that the doctor recommended, which, if you ask me, isn't close to enough time.
Although the Bad Girl was indeed bad, acknowledging that some of the things that she did to Ricardo were hurting him, there were also things that showed her humanity. Her relationship with Yilal, for example, made the Bad Girl seem almost childlike, innocent and kindhearted. I sincerely believe that many of the Bad Girl's problems originate from a very dark event in her past and that she has very little control over what she is doing, even though she knows that she is hurting Ricardo.
I believed that they truly loved each other, they just didn't seem to know how to give one another the kind of love that they needed. Ricardo wanted to love the Bad Girl tenderly, in his simple husband-wife-stable-family way. The Bad Girl needed more roughness and excitement, perhaps she needed a constant change or challenge to keep her feeling happy and alive.

The Bad Girl (Week One)

Ricardo reminded me of a lesson I learned in my Intro. to Psychology class. If one person in the relationship shows more love or adoration than the other, the relationship won’t work. The other person will feel one of three things: he or she will feel smothered, they will feel inadequate in their abilities to show affection, or they will lose interest in the relationship because their ego has been boosted and they no longer have a reason to stay with that person (they think that they can snag someone better). I think that Lily (or ex-guerrilla fighter, or ex-Madame Arnoux, or ex-Mrs. Richardson, or whoever she is- this aspect of her character reminded me very much of Conchita from "That Obscure Object of Desire") falls into the latter category. She teases Ricardo constantly about the sappy professions of love that he is constantly spewing at her. He seems pathetic to her and this reassures her that if one man can feel this way about her, then surely another (richer) man can also fall in love with her. Because he gives her no challenge, she quickly loses interest in him. Ricardo, on the other hand, loves that she mistreats him. He seems to dwell on her cruel actions, making them into overly dramatic and grossly romantic gestures. But, for Lily, he is simply a safe place to return to after she destroys one relationship after another. And in order to keep him around she gives him sex.

I first thought that Lily was just one of those girls who was so full of herself that she thought that all she had to do was lie there. She acted as if she was gracing him with her presence. She made him wait and beg for her and decided exactly when it was time to oblige. But there is something very odd about her passiveness. Lily, in many ways, likes to stay in control of the situation when it comes to her trysts with Ricardo. She decides where and when they will meet. When he finds her in London, she even pays for the hotel. So it is almost ironic that she would be so passive. It seemed, at first, that she was just being cold. She wanted to keep Ricardo at a distance; she didn't want to give any indication that she loved him. But their affairs, though fragmented, lasted for years at a time and while in London, they began to engage in pillow talk. There is a certain intimacy expressed when Ricardo talks about all of the impassioned conversations they had post-coitus. So I began to feel that her passiveness and coldness was in regards to the act of sex itself.

Ricardo mentions that it is not until after they have had sex many times that it stopped feeling like she was a virgin. She also asks him to perform oral sex on her before intercourse in which she covers her eyes with her arms in concentration. She tunes out everything as if he wasn't there. It seems that sex for her is very detached. Her pleasure is displaced from his (maybe even because of his). His part of the sexual experience acts only as “irrigation”. Which, in and of itself, is a strange choice of words. It gives the sex a sort of peculiar, practical purpose other than the pleasure of connecting two bodies.

Her passivity also acts as a catalyst of his desire. He never really obtains what he really desires- sex with Lily -because during sex, she acts as if she isn't really there.