Chris Jepson: Glow old with me

“Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove.” – Christopher Marlowe

What we all desire is that one person we love unconditionally and they us. That may be simplistic on my part but I challenge anyone to identify what it is humans want more. Oh sure, clean water, nourishing food, sufficient sleep, safety—once such fundamentals are achieved, at some core level we desire someone to share—intimately—life’s ups and downs. I do not think “it” much more complicated than that.

I’m working on a novel that I will complete in 2016 and, of course, romance, desire, sex, relationships will be an integral part of the story. How could one write about human beings and such considerations (love, etc.) not be central? Actually, if we were to generalize about fiction, its themes and plots, you’d be hard pressed to identify a more all-consuming concern than the human dynamics of lust, love and life.

I’m well aware that human beings, our story is more than love found/love lost/love refound (whomever it may be). But look no further than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” to see how “romance” holds our interest more than any Russian heroics during the Napoleonic Wars.

I opened with Christopher Marlowe’s words from “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” It is such a joyful ode to lust, desire and permanence that ends with, “Then live with me, and be my love.” Its sentiment sums-up what we all ultimately want, a love that is ours, one that transcends time. Live with me and be my love. But that it were so simple.

I’m a “fan” of mythologist Joseph Campbell. He waxes philosophic at length on the stages of human life. I recommend a volume titled: “A Joseph Campbell Companion – Reflections on the Art of Living” edited by Diane K. Osbon. In it Campbell references Goethe’s idea of the “Golden Wedding.” Campbell writes, “The goal of the Golden Wedding is implicit in the first moment of a relationship.” To simplify: from the beginning, from the initial love/lust affair, a life together will ideally end together.

How realistic is that today? That your first love (marriage) will last forever? My parents and all my siblings divorced. I am the anomaly in my family. People all around me have divorced. Love lasts, it seems, as long as love lasts. Where does it go?

I thoroughly enjoy the love songs of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers and Jerome Kern all composed timeless melodies of love and infatuation, of soulful longing, of dreams, desire and romance. I regularly listen to Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Johnny Hartman sing of love joyfully found and of love mournfully lost.

We may lose love but few of us give up on it. What we crave is that ineffable high, that exquisite, rapturous feeling of tension and desire culminating in “la petite mort.” But then what?

What is it humans ideally want? Robert Browning perhaps said it best, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

We first begin with similar desires, that together we will see life through to the end. Yet.

Whomever you’re with, whomever you love, whisper in their ear, “Glow old with me.” Suh-weeeet as life can be; let us live long and for you to forever glow old with me.