Love as a creative position

I could not make this reflection if I did not address every point outlined in Plato’s Banquet. Praise has a specific perspective; therefore, it becomes much richer to approach it part by part. I want to start with Phaedrus, for whom love is the oldest of the gods. I think of my youth when falling in love was a complete surrender. There were no shields or sharp words; it was the virtue made sacrifice.

I loved you, and you know it. Part of me would have argued that I wasn’t ready to handle that feeling. Personally, I think we never are, until we fall out of the cloud and hit the ground. Only those who love know what it is to be lost in the first love. It was in you, precisely, that I found that feeling never felt. I hid my tears every time you didn’t show up in the classroom, and I had to fill myself with courage to accept that, at some point, you wouldn’t come back to sit next to me. Our time was borrowed; moreover, like almost everything that is part of my loving dimension, it was as ephemeral as a flower in a vase.

I let you go, although a part of me will still call you in the nights. Love doesn’t disappear; it just transforms. Time is what helps us to weigh less, because we learn to carry with what we can not get rid of. In the end, you taught me to love so much that I burned from the inside. I didn’t care if it was just to listen to your breaths next to me, or if you took advantage of my care. I had the same devotion described in The Feast, that of the lover to his beloved.

Did you ever love me in return? Maybe not, but with a film of The Orchid Thief, we already discussed that we are not the ones we love, but the love we give to them. That is the most important thing at the end of the day. You taught me that I cannot seek to die for love. So, from Phaedrus, understanding love as a creative posture, I affirm that I will not die for writing. Thanks to you, I stopped believing in torture as the most correct way to fight for what you love. Well, at least you started me on that path. I want to caress you, but you run away from me; it’s a game for you. That is the writing, creation, sometimes clear, others not so much. That’s why I understand that to create is not to possess, it is to leave free, even if it hurts, even if I must agree never to see you again. That's what Phaedrus still needs to learn for his praise: true sacrifice is to free the beloved, even when knowing that they will leave forever. 

Pausanias follows, the one of Aphrodite Pandemos. But how can we not desire the immediate? Anyway, not everything that is hidden from others is a diamond, and not everything that is shared is a dirty and forgotten rag (something unworthy that should never be experienced in life). Pandemos is just another face of Aphrodite, for me, the same thing, depending on which side you want to approach it.

I can say that this side of the goddess has taught me to feel with flesh the ephemeral of time. I have lain upon warm hearts, listening to their heartbeats. I have shared the sex symposium with many, with a few, in different ways and on various occasions. I do not regret that; the flesh is something to learn to walk. The immediate is another way of painting with the tongue and fluids. As for Urania, the most beautiful and virtuous, it is the side that we keep in unwritten prayers, the most elusive to human beings. In my writings is the secret, the unsaid, what dwells in that premeditated and dreamt state. If I manage to find you, you fade. To move away from the hidden place in which you reside is to tarnish your originality. Urania is the part of creation that slips from hands and falls into the mud. The only way to work with it is to accept the help of Pandemos, because to create, you need clay, not just concepts. It may be ephemeral, but it is necessary. The balance between both, from a creative position, is to give existence to the eternal and, consequently, immortality to the momentary.

In third place, we have Erysimachus, a man of science and medicine. It teaches us that love is not only in human beings, it's in bodies, music, medicine and nature. In a creative sense, words are what matter that I borrow, through them love enters as the soul that makes them move, they have life.

We enter into the descriptions of Temperance, the opposites between what is created and what is waiting to be manifested. So I dare to contradict Aristophanes, because while in others we find absences, I firmly believe that we are already the mixture of two forces that have created us. We are fortunate that we were created from unconditional love, because it will always dwell in us. That is why we must create from unconditional love, so that our works reflect the strength that imbues them with life and beauty. In my case, even though I don’t have a father present enough, that part of him who loved my mother during my conception, along with that part of her who loves him back, will always remain in me. It’s something that no one can take away from me, because I’m made of it. I hope that later you will be able to think of my works in such a way that even if they are abandoned later, even by me, nothing can take away the initial strength I gave them.

We can continue with Agathon, for whom love is beautiful, and beauty begets goodness that makes the world work. Agathon, I can tell that you were as much in love as Phaedrus. Taking your stand means giving yourself completely to the beloved, becoming that being who yearns for what he does not own, or who intends to reproduce indefinitely what he already has, regardless of the consequences for the lover. I do not deny that in my writings I seek this permanence. However, my creation contains love because I can generate it myself, not because I am condemned to represent the nonexistent. In that, I share your praise.

Finally, Socrates, who has quoted one of the wisest women. Should I then say Diotima, the woman with the last word? Let’s start with "demon", and allow me the audacity to appropriate this word in our language, because I do not accept the satanization of things. How many demons were not forgotten, although they were closer to humans than other phenomena? For my part, I leave the religious to be scandalised by its use in this text.

In my opinion, a demon is more worthy of love than a god. His role of intermediary and his ability to inhabit us is what most connects us with the divine. If you don’t believe me, ask a Catholic how many Saints he prays to each week. The Saints appeared because it was necessary to give another name to demons, from Christianity, of course.

Eros, the devil, will continue to guide me through my narrations, my traces and my creations, whether he's a son of Pandemos or of Urania, which in the end are the same; and always from the possibility and not from lack. Finally, it is important to approach it from self-care, because giving everything is to risk losing everything, especially if it is for an ephemeral whim; while giving love is infinite, because a small part stays with us and reproduces again.

This is my position from Love.