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I can't seem to remember the last romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant or Meg Ryan. I don't have any recollection of the last film I saw that made me call loved ones with the simple intent of reminding them how much I care. I have never seen a play or musical that motivates me to go the extra mile and embrace the love I have found or hope to find in life.

I have experienced death. I have experienced persecution, opposition, and degradation. I have been privy to seeing loved ones beat. I have been beaten. I have closely followed the progress and demise of disease in those I've cared for. I have closely followed the progress and demise of circumstance in my own life. I have lived through and witnessed catastrophe in the world. 

I haven't arrived at a place of love through witness of and participation in love itself. I have arrived at a place of love with an eye set and focussed on cruelty. I have essentially found my understanding of love by entering through the back door. 

Question: How does one truly learn what love is?

Answer: By experiencing what love truly is not.

As an artist I am often tempted to deliver emotion via path of least resistance. I refuse to.

When I wanted to write about homophobia and hate of gays I didn't produce something horribly sentimental and desperate for tears of emotional understanding and approval. Instead, I beat my gays and covered them with "blood" in an unrelenting attack on the sociological understanding of homosexuality of my audience. 

**** FUTURE ****

If I wanted to write about the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany I would expand the last 2 minutes of gas chamber conversation into an hour long piece.

If I wanted to write about the devastation of 9/11 I would stage a series of monologues delivered from plane seats as the jets flew through the towers. Time lapsed, of course.

If I wanted to express the horrifying discord in trust that comes from infidelity I would require husband and wife to discuss the affair WHILE he screwed his mistress.

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???

Okay?

I don't enjoy pain. I don't enjoy suffering. I just make more sense of pain and suffering by experiencing it falsely before needing to experience it realistically.

Bloody bloody. Ouch. Eww. 

I love you.