fearless

One of the things I love about music is the way I don't always hear songs right away, but sometimes a lyric will jump out at me from behind the beat-bushes in a familiar track... the surprise of that is fun in itself, but often I find it also unlocks something for me - possibly because of the excellent sense of timing my subconscious has.

So this lunchtime I was off on my customary wander, accompanied by my iPod as I frequently am. Amongst the tunes it had pulled up to sing to me as I walked was this one, which I discovered I hadn't ever really listened to before, in spite of the fact that I've had the CD since my mate Iain bought it for me about three years ago.

The bit that really leaped out and went "boo" was:

Love, love is a verb
Love is a doing word

which suddenly clicked into place in my mind, twisted, and opened up a whole new room in there. The room it seems was full of pent-up thoughts that gleefully squeeled and ran about given the chance to come out and play in the open air of my conscious mind.

I've mentioned this obliquely a couple of times now, couching it in all sorts of careful-not-to-tempt-fate phrases, but at the risk of dancing on a hilltop with an umberella in a thunderstorm, I think I am in love, or rather I think I'm becoming involved in loving (vb) someone. That of course is the difference, and that's exactly what I hadn't fully articulated for myself, until I deciphered Liz Fraser's peculiar pronunciation, standing in line for the checkout at the Alldays with my packet of cheese and onion.

It's all too easy from the way love is presented to us (in the media mostly, but also in our own accute awareness-of-absence senses,) to fall into thinking of love as a thing, a state to be attained, or a static object to seek out and possess. We see it in terms of a goal, a target to aim at or even sometimes a pitfall to be avoided, when of course, it's none of those things: it's an activity and a process, a journey, or (to use a word recently reclaimed from the depths of cliche for me by my friend Liz) it's an adventure.

In my case it's a very new one, and beyond owning it as exactly that I don't have a great deal else to say on the matter right now. It is an activity which (for better or worse) I'm wholeheartedly engaged in right now, and that feels good to know how to say.