Etal Adnan on Love
EA
He was very much open to love as a divine energy. God is love, is what they meant by divine energy, which affects your own energy if you are receptive to it. Then you are more capable of love.
LR
In a sense, it’s like the image.
EA
Yes. You use the image almost like a pulsating, creative force. It’s moving, unlike Plato’s idea, which is fixed. It’s an energized idea that can be both an inner and outer thing. Sufis use love that way; love for flowers or for the world is part of love in general. When I wrote my little book for Documenta two years ago, they had asked me to write on my latest interest. I told them it was love. After a long life, I realized it’s what matters most. When we are young, we take things for granted, which is good—we keep going in a blind way in life. We don’t realize that our first real loves were the most important things we had. Maybe we were too young to manage them. This happened to me. The first person I loved madly, I couldn’t even look at! I was blinded; I couldn’t manage the situation. When I couldn’t manage, I would stand up and leave, and the others thought I didn’t love them, you see? I messed up because of shyness, but it was really mismanagement. Things have to be managed, even emotions, which are the least manageable. Manageable means to deal with things, and I couldn’t and I regretted it all my life. I miss that person even this hour. You don’t overcome that. You love others, you get busy, you love. It’s not only love of people—I love the world, I really do. In a way, it took the place of other loves.
LR
The love of the world?
EA
Yes. I don’t call it “nature”; I call it “the world.”
LR
Well, what is the difference between them?
EA
It’s historical. By nature we always mean landscapes. Language! The world is really the word; it’s the fact that it is.
LR
Its isness.
EA
It is and I love that. It distracted me from other forms of love. At the end of my life, I realize that the love of a person is a key to the world. Nothing matters more. To love a person in particular is the most difficult form of love, because it involves somebody else’s freedom. That is where misunderstandings come in; two people don’t have necessarily the same timing. You may love books and you may love paintings. They have their own technical difficulties, you fight with them, but you are the master of that fight.
LR
Are you talking about time and timing? I mean, if you love a book or a painting, it’s more or less stable.
EA
At least you are on top; it depends more on you. But a person has priorities, his or her problems, his or her character—you can’t control that and you don’t want to anyway. I mean, your freedom runs into somebody else’s, or a person may suddenly not love you anymore. You can do nothing about that. With a painting, it’s a different form of love. You do what you like, what you can, but it doesn’t shoot back at you. Of course if it doesn’t work you can throw your canvas away and start another one….
In the last eight or ten years I have sensed that the love of another person is the most important experience in life.
Voilà! I love thinking, poetry, politics, and the state of the world. I didn’t give up all that, but I still feel that the most revelatory experience in life is love. Friendship is close; it’s a form of love, another facet of it.
It’s funny, people want love, but when they have it, sometimes they run away—they have other priorities and they think love is an obstacle, or they get scared.
LR
Do you have advice for lovers?
EA
Try to keep going as long as you can! And with time you will get wise, so don’t lose the forest for the trees, the essential for lesser things. It’s important in love to keep tension without being a victim of that tension, and also keep some humor, some distance.
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Bro why does google docs have to autocorrect “axe” to “ax” just because that’s AmUrIcAN way to spell it? “Axe” just looks better, it looks like an actual word! “Ax” just looks like something someone would try to guess for an answer on wordscapes
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i fucking hate royal match. so fucking much.
get away from all my favorite little app games you shady bitches!!
get away from my hellsite with your creepy ass fake tiktok's with people acting like they have 0 common sense!!
"hi i'm ('celebrity' name) and i can say that royal match dosent have any adds" stfu sir no one knows who you are
that stupid little king needs to get his fucking life together and be self sufficient otherwise i will fucking lose my marbles
i am royal matches #1 hater and i will be until the day i die.
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