Haddaway asked ‘what is love?’ but failed to answer the question satisfactorily.

Compared to many of the people that I share oxygen with on a day to day basis, I am slightly advanced in my years. This more often than not leads friends, acquaintances and mortal enemies to suppose that this means I am also advanced in terms of wisdom and although this is empirically false, I have taken to growing a beard and wearing glasses in order to help maintain the hilarious charade.

Yesterday one of said people  – let’s call her a friend –  operating under this false pretense momentarily escaped the dubstep-cum-Jägerbomb funk she had entered into that very evening to ask me a question that had been playing on her mind for at least a couple of minutes:

“Marc – what is love?”

This is a question that I have asked myself before and have previously been unsuccessful at answering; bringing my successfully-answered self-addressed question (SASAQ) percentage down to an (approximate) 98.8476 percent. Usually I choose questions I feel I’ll stand a good chance of answering satisfactorily. Admittedly this does skew the odds somewhat in my favour – but as the sole competitor and judge in this ongoing competition, there’s unlikely to be much controversy.

In spite of my history with the question I felt compelled to attempt an answer once again – if only to break the awkward four minute silence that I had instigated whilst evaluating my current SASAQ percentage. In an attempt to stall further, I opened with the following gambit:

“Well… Love is a mysterious entity that invites metaphor and simile…”

This much I felt was true to the extent of being more or less bang-on. One often pictures Love as a reclusive author operating under a pseudonym of sorts (perhaps ‘Herbert S. Small’ or something similar) living a simple, secluded life in relative obscurity in a small, wooden lodge; a small, wooden lodge he or she only leaves to pick up a few necessities from the village market – which maybe opens two or three times a week (weather and season permitting).

Love’s list of ‘necessities’ would no doubt change in light of whatever metaphors or similes she (or he) was inviting on that particular occasion, and indeed whatever he (or she) was inviting them to; perhaps Sunday lunch; an evening of light cocktails, or heck; maybe just an evening watching X-Factor with pizza or something – who are we to judge? As diverse and as ubiquitous as I believe we all agree Love is, it would be foolish to presume that it (or he (or she)) has any lofty pretensions as to what constitutes ‘good’ entertainment (although we can maybe safely assume that it’s/his/her opinion in that respect excludes anything centred around Paddy McGuinness).

What happens at these encounters is anybody’s guess but indubitably nobody’s business. There’s a reason why Love (or Herbert S. Small as we know it/him/her/they through it’s/his/her/their work) is a recluse after all: Love wants a simple, peaceful life – a simple, peaceful life where metaphors and similes can be invited round on a whim without the intrusion of the world’s media and Herbert S. Small’s rapidly-expanding fanbase. Having said that, there’s probably a significant part of Love that knows that mystery and the unknown are profitable properties that can add to commercial success in some quarters. Just look at Aphex Twin. If Mr. Twin came right out and said ‘I’m a bloke with a beard and a keyboard’, people might think twice about buying his albums. It’s his reclusiveness and the very real chance that he might be an amorphic alien spontaneously belching electronic music into microphones that is arguably an essential part of his commercial success. Love is a bit like this.

Is Love a kiss on a newborn baby’s forehead? Is it a surprisingly-affordable bunch of ten red roses from M&S drunkenly thrust into the unwilling palm of an expecting mother and wife? Is it a chemical response in the brain to a perceived exit out of the lonely, confusing, vacuous hellhole we celebrate as life? It may be one or all of these things, or indeed none of them. In the absence of any hard evidence, transcribed interviews or corroborated sightings of Love, we may never know.

We can of course turn to the innumerable metaphors and similes that Love invites; but how do we know if what they tell us is true? If you were a metaphor – for arguments sake let’s say a visual one involving flowers and a bumblebee – would you betray Love’s confidence for the sake of a moment of notoriety and fame? Potentially sacrificing future invites to Love’s frankly beautiful country lodge? It depends largely on what entertainment, food or refreshments are being served, I grant you. But Love’s continued mystery and remoteness implies that for the most  part, metaphors and similes are keeping shtum.

“So it is probably a good thing – for both us as consumers and the continued success of Herbert S. Small – that Love remains this way.” I offered by way of conclusion.

“WTF?” my friend countered, eyes literally squinting from enlightenment.

“Exactly!” I smiled, and triumphantly adjusted my SASAQ percentage.