By The Landlord
“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” ― Dr. Seuss
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you – is not that strange?” — William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
“You call it madness, but I call it love." - William Shakespeare, As You Like It
“Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.” – Oscar Wilde
“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“Weird love's better than no love at all.” – Stephen King, The Green Mile
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” – Jane Austen, Persuasion
“Love is being stupid together.” – Paul Valéry
“Love loves to love love.” – James Joyce, Ulysses
“Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.” – David Levithan
“True friends stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde
Because you behave and move like a leggy frog, a curious bird, a mischievous monkey, or the Pink Panther. Because you say what no one else will dare say and uncannily, it’s exactly what I’m thinking. Because you have a stylish limp and a clever, if unwitting wink. Because you have eyes like surprised golden eggs, and a smile like a wild washing line. Because you unconsciously pull the funniest faces. Because you are always a mystery. Because you are brilliant at being yourself. Because you make me feel like the real me. And because you’re like the human version of my ultimate playlist.
Eccentric, twisted, dark, silly or oddball, an embrace of imperfections and shared oddities, and somehow allowing you to leap into the uniquely comforting duvet of your own familiar skin, love is not always swooning beauty and conventional romance, but full of idiosyncratic habits, unconventional attractions, asymmetries, imperfections, indulgences and secret tastes, a mirroring of personal imperfections and making them feel just right.
And this is what we’re celebrating this week – a different kind of love, not the usual or generalised soft-focus cliches about beauty and romance, but songs which describe unique features and include colourful detail, or behaviour that stirs an individual’s tastes, alternative sex drives, emotions and attraction. Might that mean falling in love with a deadly vampire, a stylish zombie, a sexy scarecrow, an alien, a marvellous monster, crafted around a certain kink? Or maybe an assassin, a spy, a spaceman? Maybe less glamorously, an enigmatic salesman, a singing street cleaner, or a lonely lighthouse keeper? Or anyone with more elusive but no less unconventional qualities.
Are you the fishy wine that will give me a headache in the morning, or just a dark blue landmine that will explode without a decent warning? This is the question posed by one song that might come out this week.
"Love is the strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another person,” writes James Thurber.
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you,” wrote the American poet and short story writer Mary Carolyn Davies, who used the pseudonym Roy Croft for the much quoted poem – Love’ A timeless if something saccharine line often brought out at weddings.
But some who remark on the subject conjure up perhaps images beyond what we might want to imagine : “Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them,” reckons the British popular social studies and philosopher author Alain de Botton.
But Johnny Carson took it further and more succinctly when declaring, metaphorically, that: “When turkeys mate they think of swans.” I think we know what he means, if that’s slightly sticking your neck out a bit.
So beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but love is even more complex and unpredictable. Some quirks of the heart move uniquely like magnets swapping positions in a state of flux, doing a strange pole dance of love and invisible energy in a constant state of motion and in a human context - emotion.
Fatal attraction? “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell,” declares Joan Crawford, who had not shortage of sparkly bright yet destructive attractions.
Another dimension to this subject might make reference to historical or famous odd couples. From the very beginning, what is odder that the biblical Adam and Eve? Or any millions of arranged marriages, such as those of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, whose union in 1540, his fourth was annulled after six months and never consummated, in part because Henry was disappointed by her appearance after a Holbein portrait did not appear to do match his expectations. And yet, unlike some of his other unfortunate marriages, she died of natural causes, keeping her head, and remained a close and trusted friend to the mercurial monarch, known as the King's Beloved Sister. A weird attraction indeed.
Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. A very odd marriage indeed - full of friendship and no sex at all
Married or just friends, or more like brother and sister? What, for example, of the unique creative partnership of Jack Gillis and Meg White of the White Stripes, married in 1996, with Jack taking Meg’s surname, but whose changing relationship was more often portrayed as a brother-sister dynamic.
Jack and Meg
When that quirky love is both predictable but also volatile, it might also conjure examples of famous couples, tempestuous or with their own unique attraction, that may have been celebrated in song might include:
Back together again: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
Lust for danger: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow
Creative quirks. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
And finally, quirky love and attraction might potentially include other relationships - siblings, or best friends, depending on how this unfolds. But now it’s time to bizarre relationship of song and topic context with your suggestions in comments below, blessed potentially by this week’s Sagacious Celebrant - ShivSidecar. Place your songs for the deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week. It’s all strangely irresistible …
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