One of my best friends in the world is getting married over Labor Day weekend and I’m heading back to the West Coast to be his best (wo)man next week. We are both performance poets, met in a performance poetry class in fact, and he has asked me to write something for the wedding ceremony.Right now, I feel like I am the worst person to give any sort of relationship/ committment/ marriage advice or poetic waxing to anyone in earshot, let alone at a wedding of someone I deeply care about. What do I know about making love stay, about sustaining a relationship, about falling in love? I feel like an amateur. I barely have any of this figured out.
I’m jealous of their relationship and committment sometimes. And I know them both well enough to know that I am going to learn so much – about relationships, life, love – from the way that they stay committed to each other.
So I don’t have to give relationship advice – or deep insights about love and marriage and commitment. Okay. But then, I guess my question is, what the hell do I say?
I’ve been a bit obsessed with theories of love in the past five-ish years. I have read and do own A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman and All About Love by bell hooks and If the Buddha Dated & If the Buddha Married by Charlotte Kasl and Against Love: A Polemic and any other books on love that I could get my hands on, really, including the occasionally cheesy self-help variety (which I actually read frequently).
I’m thinking I’ll start there. Perhaps I can pull some quotes or ideas into one coherent (short) piece and that’ll be enough. General observations about loving, nothing too specific.
I don’t know. I’m working on it.
Write a piece that details how much you envy the rare love that they have found, why their communication is so special and rare, and how you look forward to learning from them.