I’ve been talking with friends about heartbreak.
“Oh?” said Anne, “are you going to mention that time you abandoned your family and ran off with a professional dominatrix?”
Funnily enough I hadn’t planned to. Not conducive. Saving that one for a rainy day. When I need to do a post on mid life crisis. My heartbreak came later, more slyly, when I realised the enormity of what I had done, and what I could have lost. The reason that episode can now be joked about, and even used to introduce a column, is Anne sent me an email after ten months estrangement with a single quote in it.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
The rest, as they say, is a lifetime of grovelling and making up.
Ironically Soren Kierkegaard is the last person you would want advice on love from. After reuniting, I bought some books on him, and read what he had to say. Turns out he’s an utter knob. A snobby glass-half-empty, well, almost bone dry, knob.
If that wasn’t enough, he’s also an utter dick. He was besotted by sixteen year old hottie Regine Olsen. After lusting after her for a couple of years, six years her senior, he proposed, only to break if off after a year because he was indeed a snobby glass-half-empty knob. It broke her heart. We shall return to this later. 1
I write this column as if it's a continuation of a conversation with a friend, assuming they'll remember what I wittered on about the previous week. Due to actual, and frequent I might add, conversations with heartbroken friends, last weekend's missive was a tad on the light side. One of these very friends was forcing themselves to read Jane Eyre, a coincidence perhaps, unrelated to lost love and romantic punishment. I signed off asking how do we know when we are exercising a lesser community-of-self self; bettering ourselves, and when we are pretending to be something we are not?
Turns out total downer, snobby dick Kierkegaard has a pretty nifty practice for this. If you actually know your Kierkeknob, hold your tongue, there's a bit of interpretation here.
He proposes there are three ages to life 2. The aesthetic, the ethical, and the Saut dans le Vide. This is French for Leap into the Void. Kierkegaard was Danish. All will make sense soon. The aesthetic is the juvenile stage, all about self pleasure, what feels good, the sybarite. Then adulting steps in and says, hey this is all a bit vacuous, I feel I'm missing something constantly chasing the next high. I should volunteer at the charity shop, help the neighbour with the orphans or whatever it is the neighbour does, recycle, smile at old ladies, etc. Doing what's best for a pleasant integrated-into-society life.
Neither of these is truly you. One is short term satisfaction, no growing. The other is society's expectations of you (being a total downer, snobby dick, Kierky didn't have too much regard for society). To be the authentic you, you decide how much of one, and how much of the other you need. Then you take a leap into the void.
What? Kierkegaard never said that! OK, he didn't. He said turn to God. He died alone. Regine Olsen married and outlived him. Ha! Take that Kierkegaard! He also proposed a Leap of Faith. He meant it literally. Leap towards God. Other folks interpret it as more of a leap into decision.
First, Kierkegaard never actually said a leap of faith, he proposed a qualitative leap3. This is a sort of reasoning where you start with where you want to end up, circular reasoning, circulus in probando. Decide on the balance of aesthetic and ethical that will make you happy, regardless of and/or accounting for judgement by society. Then hurl yourself at it. A highly reasoned fake it till you make it, but having fully experienced the extremes of pleasure, and the boredom of respectability first.
This whole Kierkegaard never said thing, plus being a heartbreaking God botherer, kind of puts a dampener on his third age. So let's visualise this as Yves Klein's "Saut dans le Vide". His Leap into the Void. 4
I first saw this seminal image as a poster on the wall in the apartment of the woman I married twice. Yves would be proud. Kierkegaard less so, perhaps.
We must decide on a future, having experienced the lessons of the past, and throw ourselves forward.
Intermission.
Not sure I can recommend Cigarettes After Sex, in the context this column is written principally for my own amusement, then sent to friends. All of whom know my love for the band. With ten million plays on Youtube it also seems unlikely that the group would be unknown to newer subscribers. What is true, perhaps, is they are romantic melancholy personified, so inimitably suited or unsuited, depending on how you look at it, for the broken hearted.
Possibly Anne's favourite band, even though she admits they are somewhat piney and whiney. Here’s Fag After Shag’s most popular song "Apocalypse"
Heartbreak. The issue is not that they have left us, but that they are with someone else. Kierkegaard also said
The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.
Except he didn't. Again. Nothing like it at all in fact. Someone must have thought it sounded pretty Kierkegaardian, and pinned his name to it. Now a plethora of inspirational sites produce desktop wallpapers quoting it.
In terms of heartbreak it's interesting. Partly because the heartbroken nod, and say, yes, that's it! But it's plainly ridiculous. Remembering the future. Phff.
Heartbreak is viewed through a lens of betrayal and jealousy, giving credence to that ridiculous line. The bereft imagine perfect futures, which they then think they have been robbed of.
Jared Diamond in his book "Guns Germs and Steel" uses the Anna Karenina Principle to dismiss claims that only Eurasians were capable of domesticating animals 5. Or as he paraphrases Tolstoy "Domesticable animals are all alike; every undomesticable animal is undomesticable in its own way." It is not that Eurasians are better in some way, rather, so many factors are required for an animal to suit domestication, that very few met requirements. Eurasians were simply lucky that the majority of "perfect" animals already existed in their land. There are so many ways that an animal can fail, the odds of success are slim.
This is remembering a future. The departed chose poorly, abandoning, cheating or reneging. They failed. Betrayal and jealousy makes the heartbroken think that choice was incorrect, they hope for a future where everything went perfectly right.
Philosophy is pretty much useless. Except when it comes to heartbreak. The heartbroken want you to say their ex was wrong, that they made the wrong choice. While that is invariably true, it's pointless.
Because you, the heartbroken, are a point of singularity. No, not a terrible and inappropriate Bridget Jones singleton or Fight club single serving pun. You are the point of singularity in the future light cone.
There is the past, which happened. Obviously. There is the now. The exact moment of now. Right now. Right here. And there is the future. The future of infinite possibilities. So many possibilities. Your ridiculous remembered future is outside the future light cone. 6
Love is heroin. Only not as reliable. There's a reason Buddhists, Daoists and most philosophers stay away from love. It messes with you. An enormous high followed by cold turkey when the other does a Kierky.
The comedown interferes with our reasoning, thinking that even though they made the wrong choice, we also made the wrong choice. We wasted our time. "I wasted four years of my life" said daughter. No you didn't, I said. Cue massive angry mouthful. Don't argue with daughters. A year later, there was acknowledgement that things were indeed right for the time.
The heartbreaker, who it is tempting to resent, was right for that time. It's simply that they are no longer right in this time. Put aside the negative influences of betrayal and jealousy, to reveal in fact that they showed you something valuable. They helped hone, or discover, or support, indirectly or directly, a facet of you. A facet that's now within you, leading into a better future. A fuller future. A better developed future.
What utter bullshit is this Julian? Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. An example, a dear friend met someone at the start of Covid, who shared characteristics that led to a very entertaining lock-down together, but when normal life returned, those same characteristics became very unsuitable. Remorse and anguish is caused by “remembering the future outside the light cone”, possibilities that are impossible to have been created by the actual events in the past light cone. Life can only be understood backwards.
Now is the time for Saut dans le Vide. Do not imagine how much better it would be with them, because they have evidently proved themselves masters of the poor decision. Throw yourself into the void. Hurl yourself even. Believe in the new you. Faith! This I believe is what Kierkegaard means by "but it must be lived forwards" (emphasis mine). That you must push yourself onwards in a leap of faith, the imperative, and once things are seen for what they were, the past is understood as necessary to have brought us here.
Or as Anne likes to say "Everything has been leading up to this moment". Might be Kierkegaard. Might not. Sounds vaguely Kierkegaardian enough to close with.
A footnote. Yves Klein is famous for his blue, blue, electric, blue, that's the colour of my Klein, blue-ue. And having bare naked ladies roll around on canvases dipped in it. International Klein Blue 7. Leap into the Void was not revealed as a composite photo until eighteen years after his death. The deception, rather than sully its meaning, by way of his interest in the void, inspired by zen and judo, and pioneering performance art, combine, I think, into reinforcing the message of creating a new future by throwing yourself into the present. 8
Anne had it hanging on a wall as a reminder to be brave in leaving the father of her two children, where I would then see it on our first night together.
I was gratified to find last week's recommendations found new fans, so I'm going to continue mining cult books from the 90s and suggest "Anthropology and a hundred other stories" by Dan Rhodes.
Again we have an Oulipian work, this time not 253 characters described in 253 words, but 101 stories about girlfriends, each told in 101 words. They’re glib, sarcastic, funny, and yes, feature lots of heartbreak.
It too is out of print. Amazon has second hand copies, and the first 26 pages can be read on Google books books.google.es/books?id=lvDO3r0hG_UC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false including my favourite "Faithfull" along with another five on his site danrhodes.co.uk/books/anthropology-and-a-hundred-other-stories/
Anthropology and a hundred other stories
Dan Rhodes
www.amazon.co.uk/Anthropology-Hundred-Stories-Dan-Rhodes/dp/1847675506
The artist Fatima Fletcher produced a Bench Sticker for the Broken Hearted available on request fatimafletcher.com/bench
Application and location photography courtesy of @_jackrw. This sticker and bench is at Black Rock, Victoria, Australia.
Further listening
David Bowie - Sound & Vision
Fatboy Slim - Right Here, Right Now (when life gives you Kierkegaard play Fatboy)
Further reading
"Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond
Buy here
www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel.html
Illustration by Timothy Hunt
“Cry” ©2021 Timothy Hunt
A shoutout to Timothy Hunt, my favourite illustrator, who very kindly allowed use of his work to enliven this post. Please do him a solid by following him on Instagram and liking all his posts. Even better would be visiting his shop and purchasing a print, gold star goes to commissioning him to design or illustrate your next project.
www.instagram.com/timothyjphunt
www.timothyjphunt.co.uk/shop
A small ask
I’m currently interviewing a few more authors , who have kindly relented agreed to humour my inquisitiveness. I feel rather sheepish in the number of subscribers, and would love their words and work to reach a wider audience.
If there’s anyone you know who you think would enjoy these posts, please forward this edition on to them, or a different one you think better suited to wooing. Better still, ring them up, harangue, shout, threaten and coerce them into subscribing. Nicely, of course.
References
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266750
Image borrowed from https://www.moma.org/collection/works/173482, sorry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone
Light cone in 2D space plus a time dimension.
SVG version: K. Aainsqatsi at en.wikipedia Original PNG version: Stib at en.wikipedia
https://observer.com/2019/03/klein-blue-is-now-for-sale-by-ressource-paint-company/
the publishing company Fitzcarraldo Editions use IKB for their jackets https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/
Space is a waste of time. And time a waste of space. What really annoys me is that you cannot create or destroy energy. Great article this week incidentally.
She was hardly a dominatrix, mind you...