Purity
A Couleur Locale note on love, Roberta Flack, and A Day Like a Thousand Years
At the Table
Feels Mediterranean, doesn’t it?
In fact, this festive meal took place near the windy coast of the Netherlands, where the story and the loving couple in it are situated.
Where does the golden hue in the image come from then?
Maybe it is the soul. Maybe it comes from the inner warmth of the circle of people around them, who deeply love this orphan boy they have taken into their hearts. Maybe it’s how they rejoice when the boy meets this girl.
For these people around them, this is reason enough to celebrate.
They know a simple and profound truth:
Love is what makes the world go round.
I know many old couples who confirm it. I also know enough of the pain and the longing when it breaks or never happens. I know the stories of the in-between.
I always feel a bit like defending myself and this story. Maybe writing a love story somehow involves making a pledge. One day—will that day ever come?—I may know exactly what I am really defending and fighting for. Perhaps it is already clear to you all along.
But I’m the writer here, see? It is a sensitive thing to me. This story is so tender and precious. These lovers have become a bit like offspring. And I do realize I may have a bit of the attitude of an overprotective mom. I wish these kids all the love in the world, and a good world to live in. And I don’t want bad things to happen to them—and if they do, I want them to overcome them.
They would laugh at me, of course, and say: sure mom, that’s kind of you. Let’s take the world as it is, we have things to do. And did you not write that yourself in our story? That true love does not blind but sharpens your senses?
Yet it’s also in the story itself. Various people appear wishing the girl and the boy all the best in the world.
It is not about apology. And not about defending myself.
It’s about defending them. That is a good thing. And it goes by instinct.
The world will always welcome lovers, As Time Goes By.
It is a huge life force. Yes, it makes one vulnerable. Loving is dangerous. And even when real and pure, it is not always glorious. It can be denied, betrayed, or simply overlooked. It’s not always forever.
I want to defend the purity.
Time for a piece of literature and a song. Both fictional, so they will not decide or prove anything. They just show.
One of my many inspirations has been the Flemish novel Hermione Betrapt by Hubert Lampo. Quite an oldie now. It’s Paris in the early sixties. But love stories are timeless.
In it, a flashback: a summer meal at the Belgian coast, with rain and thunder outside. Eighteen-year-old Rudolf sits opposite seventeen-year-old Désirée. She knows, she just feels and knows she loves him. He is too bewildered and enchanted by her to think or feel anything clearly yet, but is led by the pure magic of the moment and the aura of her presence.
That could be tricky in the long run, but nevertheless this is how it usually goes, if all goes well. And it does in Lampo’s novel. What emerges between them lasts through the years, through the horrors of a world war, through misery, rupture, misunderstanding, mourning, deception, and meeting again. It is love for life.
(sorry, I could not find an English translation anywhere)
When a festive meal came up in A Day Like a Thousand Years, I was writing in a different century. So much has changed. I wrote from the soul of the girl at the table. She has been intimate with her lover already, and when she is invited into the circle of his almost-adoption family, she feels joy and humility.
She knows very well how she is shining like a jewel at the center. But her loving eyes see clearly. She is all eyes and ears for the gentleness and the quiet strength in and around the presence of this boy. How this orphan child is loved by two large families and how much he means to them.
She radiates as a girl. He is beaming like a young man.
They represent center and periphery. It’s that balanced admiration, like a dance.
Love that does not blind but makes one see and hear and feel more truly.
I may have learned this from Lampo’s novel. Although Lampo is more in the skin of the man and not that much of the woman. His women therefore often remain mysterious, and his men often don’t seem to have a clue what draws women to them. That amuses me, but it also touches me.
Yet it was time to let the girl look back. How the girl looks at the boy, and how much in love she is.
Which brings us back to purity.
Here is our couple the evening before, at a fish restaurant by the seaside.
There is that same golden hue. Here it is just her and him.
(and a lovely waitress who sees and understands)
After that scene had been written, the song came to my mind:
Feel Like Makin’ Love, heartbreakingly simple and pure. Sung by Roberta Flack.
Also surprisingly mature. Yes, because that fits them. These dear young souls, suddenly awake to themselves and to each other.
Stories are like golden chains, all linked together. This goes especially for love stories. This is how the subconscious works when creating something. First one creates, and later the whole background appears.
It’s never just a single voice. It has nothing to do with opinion. It is a chorus. It’s a profound, timeless archetype.