Ascending Into Love

Short Talk on the Sensation of Aeroplane Takeoff

Well you know I wonder, what if it’s love running towards my life with its arms up yelling let’s buy it, what a bargain!

-        Anne Carson, Open Field. New York: Persea Books, 2005. p. 69

We don’t really “fall” in love. It’s a metaphor, and maybe it’s dead.

Maybe “aeroplaning” into love is a better one.

The plane lifts off the ground.

You’re pressed back in your seat.

Your insides are doing weird things.

You hit a pocket of air

And it’s like, holy shit, you’re everywhere!

No matter how many times we fly,

We still get that sense of Whoa.

You’re in a tin can 45, 000 feet above the water.

You’re doing something

Extrahuman.

-        Dr. Bart Vautour, Lecture, Nov. 26, 2015

I’ve been thinking a lot about where creative inspiration comes from. It never comes out of nowhere. Every work of art is made in response to the ones before it, and intended to provoke a response from someone else. By talking about Ms. Carson the way he did, my teacher made the metaphor his own, and by arranging it the way I did, I added something too.

Does anyone have a quote, a song, a picture or a link to something that they enjoy? You could post it here. We could start a whole string of them.