Guided Journal

I was given an assignment in class to choose and write about my favorite love song. Here is what I turned in.

Title: I Know
Artist: Fiona Apple

Describe why this is your favorite love song and what the song signifies to you: When I was a sophomore I got really into Fiona Apple, I believe because of the film “Magnolia”, which was directed by her then boyfriend (and my then GOD) Paul Thomas Anderson. I also had become sad that year, and a girl I liked liked Fiona Apple too. We would stay on the phone late at night listening to her together. She was a senior, we made out in the back of her Suburban to Aimee Mann. (I think I’ve just forgiven her, right at this moment, no kidding.) (For things which I have not written about in here.) Anyway, back then this song signified being wrapped up in a relationship, I would literally use it as a blanket to make me feel okay while I drifted to sleep. I haven’t actually listened to it in a year or two, like really listened, partly because it never touched me the way it used to when I was still enjoying touching wall sockets (I’m talking about adolescence and emotions!) and for other reasons too. It seems to me now that it’s about the oneness of real love. I mean, even in not-so-real love you become like a person, like one person. Maybe how one person in the relationship becomes a sort of conscience to the other, I’m not saying that they keep the other straight. What I’m trying to say is that this song gives me a feeling of responsibility one partner feels for the other, being of one spirit together, and the almost God-like silence that one must give when the other is…not so good? You know, I’m young, I don’t really know that much about a real co-dependent AND healthy relationship. I’m really just telling you how what Fiona Apple is inspiring in my head. She inspires a bond for me.

Explain what love means to you: Honestly I just believe about love what it says in the bible. It didn’t used to mean as much to me, you know I’d read that “Love is kind, love is not selfish” and say “yup yup, that’s right” and go right along to call my girlfriend sobbing about how she hung out with someone else, you know. But now, really, it also says YES! It says “God is love,” and that’s it! I’m telling you, my belief (and many I’m sure) true LOVE, unselfish, unconditional, GENUINE is GOD. In between two people, that is love. To me, love is not lust. It seems a lot of people use lust as a building block to love, when from my understanding of love, lust doesn’t come into play at all. Attraction, yes of course. I don’t know. My understanding is still trying to be understood. Love to me is water.