Love, Actually.

I'm a big fan of animated shorts. No, not dancing pants, you smart arses - short films, often computer-animated or in pixilation. Pixar's been doing these for years, usually showing them just before cinema screenings of their full-length feature films, but in the last 5 years short films have come on in leaps and bounds. Helped in part with a nod of recognition by awards from big-name bodies such as the Oscars and Sundance, and aided by advancements in computer and graphic animation, animated shorts and short films are fast becoming the most modern and groundbreaking area of cinema. A great website for checking these out is http://www.shortoftheweek.com. Give it a browse, you'll be surprised at the stuff that's out there. A few of my favourites include French Roast (a charming little French animation about the kindness of strangers), Alma ('Alma' means 'soul' in Spanish - watch it to understand), and The Division of Gravity (a slightly pretentious but nonetheless accurate depiction of the life and death of a relationship). My all-time favourite is actually used for a music video for what I think is an incredible track by the Drum'n'Bass artist S.P.Y. It uses clips from a short film by Spize Jonze called I'm Here so effectively and beautifully that you wouldn't know it wasn't an official music video. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the best music video (unofficial or otherwise) I have ever seen. If you do nothing else with your day, watch it: 

To me, this is love. Love, I believe, is different for everyone. It changes with age, with the person whom you are loving, and the way in which you express it. I always said I'd know when I was in love when I could honestly say that I would willingly give my life to another. So far, I've only been able to say that twice. When I love someone, I usually write a lot. Lyrics, journals, poems - it's my way of making something intangible, tangible; something I fear to be fleeting, permanent. Unfortunately, after relationships end, these are not things that you want to cart around with you to remind you of what once was, so I tend leave them at home. However, being back for Christmas, and watching By Your Side, inspired me to dig them out, for, (to quote Love Actually) "if you can't say it at Christmas, when can you say it...". 

The first thing I found was a book. It was given to me for Christmas in 2009 by my first serious boyfriend of over a year, and contains our whole relationship in its pages. He had painstakingly retrieved and glued in all our letters, emails, pictures and songs we had penned together, for one another, and I had added to it after our relationship ended. In it, I found lyrics that I had written when I was 17 - lyrics that symbolised what love meant to me at that age. Here is a snippet of what I wrote:

Light two candles in the dark,

One for me, one for my heart

Make a wish and blow them out -

No secret who I wish about.

Will you stay and never leave?

No need to doubt as I believe

That we can make it you and me

No arguments, I guarantee

(Chorus)

Here's a song I wrote for you,

Nothing special but it'll do

Remember me when you hear this play

A way of being with you every day.

Ok, so it's not Shakespeare. Or even Bob Dylan. But it's a testament of love as a teenager, in it's wholesome, naive and optimistic glory. I decided to keep digging, and eventually came across a more recent artefact of romantic ramblings from the last year: a journal I had kept over the summer. In amongst the inane day-to-day recording of my life, I had written what love meant to me at this time, for a different person, nearly 4 years later:

"It is a feeling that never goes away, it is a longing, an unwavering certainty that you would do anything for that other person - even so far as giving your own life for theirs...I can’t think of anyone who would love you so unconditionally, so unselfishly, and who would do so much for you - come what may. That embraces and loves your merits and your flaws equally...I believe, in love, you accept and adore the imperfections, the quirks - it’s what makes the other person interesting. It’s what makes them them..."

After thinking about it for a while, I started to wonder what other peoples' 'meaning' of love was, so, rather than listen to some Leonard Cohen or Coldplay, I decided to conduct a little survey. Here are the results:

1. Have you ever said 'I Love You' and didn't mean it?

57% of you said YES

2. Have you ever truly been in love?

86% of you said YES

As a follow-up question, I then asked: What does being in love mean to you? I've decided to keep this anonymous, but here are some of your answers...

• "Being able to be completely yourself and not worry about scaring them away because you're both as strange as each other!" 
• "Knowing there is one person you can truly trust and rely on, knowing that you never have to make apologies or compromise who you are, knowing that feelings are honest and true and are going to last, knowing that when everything else around you falls apart you still have that one person who has this exclusive ability to make everything better, knowing that there is only one."
• "Feeling as though there is nothing that can not be conquered! You are completely safe and yet as free as you want to be. No fear or apprehension, just pure belief."
• "Being totally comfortable with someone whilst at the same time finding them sexy beyond belief, to enjoy them taking care of you and vice versa. I think although you should always have trust and belief in the relationship, it's good to have a knowledge that if they left you, your life, as you know it, would end..."
• "Having complete trust in the other person and knowing they do in you. And wanting to share every success, failure & experience with them as you know they will love you whatever."
• "So many things - it is laughing like you never have, smiling ear to ear, crying over the smallest argument and feeling every inch of your being die when you think you have lost them or they are hurt. It is such a complete, raw emotion that it is like a drug making you feel everything 100 times more."
• "Being in love means being a team. Putting the other person in front of you and being willing to do anything for them. Whenever you are thinking about things you always think of them first. I knew exactly when I fell in love because I always thought about what he would have thought before me and taking into consideration other his feelings before mine. It's when you feel altruistic and forget about what you want or need just to compromise for the other persons emotions instead."
• "It is very subjective, but for me love is definitely not a compromise... I agree love, or any relationship, is based on teamwork but in a team you don’t put someone before yourself, just as you would never put yourself before them. You stand side by side and support each other in every endeavour. Altruism isn’t reserved for love and love shouldn’t determine your character, I think it’s very important to be happy independent and to maintain that relationship with yourself regardless of relationship status... I guess the defining feature of love, in my perspective, is that it is healthy and mutual. Love is, to me, about a reciprocation of emotion because one of the loveliest things about being In love is knowing that someone loves you back, trusting in that and finding empowerment in it..."
• "It's a level of unconditional trust with someone. The kind of report where you can be in a room with the same person and that in itself makes you incandescently happy, even if you're both doing your own thing. I have found love often to be inexplicable, but it's a level of comfort and happiness that can't be matched."
• "Having the ability to overlook one another's flaws and respect each others differences, to feel comfortable in your own skin whilst wanting to be the best you can be with them, to hurt when they hurt and to feel indestructible whilst in each others presence."

Well. It would seem that "love, actually, is all around..."

Merry Christmas.

Love,

Belle x

Great Expectations

Last week, one of my best friends told me about Lana Del Rey's extended video for her new single Ride. Three words: I'm in love. Lana's been my girl crush for over a year now, and her videos never fail to impress - but this one takes it to a whole new level. Check it out:

In the monologue, which is fantastic, there was one phrase that stuck with me: "If I said that I didn't plan for it to turn out this way, I'd be lying..." - and it got me thinking about how our expectations, the hopes, dreams, and sometimes fears we had for ourselves many years ago, have transpired. 

In a month, I'll be 22. Not very old, I would argue, but old enough to be 'grown up', by anyone's standards. Recently, I re-read my journal that I kept over my Gap Year in Italy. I realised that I haven't really grown up at all since then: I'm still making the same mistakes, still not doing enough with my time, and still haven't figured out the answers to questions I had in my teens. The girl - or woman - I had hoped I would become still hasn't appeared. By now, I had hoped to be one of those people who went to the gym every week, ate three healthy meals a day, didn't need a man to feel complete, focused on her studies and general improvement of herself, and had so many friends that she would spend every evening going for drinks. Instead, I haven't set foot in a gym in about 2 years, I'm lucky to make anything more than a cup of tea for breakfast, feel better about myself when I've got a boyfriend, focused on anything other than work or self-improvement, and have friends who are probably too busy doing the things I'm not to have cocktails. Sex in the City my life is not. Yet, at the same time, I'm not exactly surprised. There are certain things that you can tell will never happen. For example, I'm certain I will never become an astronaut, or a heroin addict - or a combination of the two. But the rest is a bit of a grey area. I always admire those sensible people, who get up and go for a jog every morning before reading the paper over a bowl of low-fat muesli, but I have to admit - I don't envy them. Perhaps it's just me, but isn't life more exciting when you don't have any expectations? When you don't set yourself deadlines to complete X or Y? Or maybe I'm just lazy and bad with pressure (actually, there's no maybe in there - I am lazy and bad with pressure). I'd like to think I'm one of those people who just grabs an opportunity when it goes past, rather than putting on my safari hat and going looking for one - because it's the things that you don't see coming that make life worth living, isn't it? It's the surprises that turn out to be successes, the people you never expect to like becoming your best friends, and - in a way - the relationships you thought would never end, ending, that make us who we are - not the goals, expectations and hopes we pin upon ourselves.

Curious to see whether I was alone in this, I asked a few friends whether who they are now had lived up to their own expectations. This is what they said:

Rosie, 21: "I can't really remember what I wanted to be like when I was older. Although I remember looking at friends sisters and thinking how amazing, stylish and cool they were! They were driving around, went out all the time and just oozed 'coolness' and I probably thought I wanted to be like them. I thought sixth form would be amazing, then I thought uni would be the best time of my life and I could do whatever I wanted, but not so much!! I probably wanted to be a little skinner with less spots - I was told as I got older my spots would go - they lied! I probably thought I'd be living in london, living the high life, going out all the time and not have a care in the world! So no, I probably didn't live up to what I thought I was going to be, but in a way it's better than what you can imagine. I've carved my own life, my own friends and just enjoy every day. I try to think that I only have a few months left before real life kicks in - but maybe that will throw up some surprises on the way!!"

Becca, 21: "Yes I think so. It’s possibly even better than I expected. In my teens I worried about whether there would be a time in my life that I would be completely alone and if I would be able to cope without my friends or family who I have depended on so much in the past, but having moved to Spain three months ago not knowing a soul here in this city, without a place to live and not understanding the bus system, I can safely say that it’s all worked out really well and I started to feel settled and at home here after about a week. The only thing I can think of that my 16 year-old self would be disappointed with is my smoking habit!"

Hannah, 21: "I visioned myself as this sophisticated working gal with good job moved out from home etc... but I hadn't really factored in university and when I'd have graduated. With the recession and job market I have now factored in the fact that life isn't a walk in the park, I will get job rejections and probably not the exact dream job I'd invisaged to get with the click of my fingers. How very naive I was."

Amy, 22: "Well, let’s start with who I was at sixteen, entering the real world for the first time and making the decision of my life… who, or what am I going to be? I was full of optimism and interest. I had many aspirations and dreams. I used my free time to volunteer in a number of things, none of which matter now but the purpose was to create some meaning in my life, to make a difference. That’s what I wanted to do. Make a difference. Although then, I didn’t know how. I guess I imagined myself as some sort of activist or journalist or humanist, fighting for peoples’ rights and being an advocate. Travelling; finding myself in interesting and out of the ordinary places, meeting new and exciting people. Making real differences in real peoples’ lives. I always knew I wanted something like that, people orientated founded on good qualities and values, so after college I took a year out and thought about it, not without the obligatory bit of travelling mind. So now I’m twenty-two and I’ve just started my first job as a qualified nurse in critical care unit in a busy city centre hospital. Did I ever think that I’d become a nurse when I was 16? No. To be honest it never crossed my mind, it just hit me one day that that is what I wanted to do and I’ve loved it ever since. Honesty and kindness and all of those qualities that I wanted in my life are paramount to my role as well as a certain degree of critical thinking and intelligence. I get to do all of the things I always wanted to do, all rounded up in a little job that most of you probably never think twice about. I’m starting a career that holds lots of hope and opportunity, I just have to go out and find it.
So, have I lived up to the expectation of who I wanted to be? I suppose so, just not in the way I initially imagined; sometimes I feel that I’ve fallen into the mundane slog of day to day life, getting up at 6am, paying bills and spending the rest of my wages on meaningless shit that makes me temporarily happy but this is my life and it will do for now, afterall I’m just getting started. Oh, and as for finding myself in all those interesting and unusual places? Meeting new and exciting people and making some real differences? Well, I guess that’s what comes next…"

My Mother (age withheld coz she's a lay-dee): "Well, I think that dreams are very dramatic when you are young, and you play such a central role in your own story. As you mature, you realise that outside forces (chance, fate, genetics) play a much stronger role in life than you thought and this makes you more tolerant and forgiving of yourself and others. Your hopes and dreams change; you learn to appreciate gentleness, kindness and good humour, and perceive a happy family life to be far more desirable and satisfying than the worldly success or fortune you may have striven to achieve in your youth."


There's a great quote by the Japanese author Hakuri Murakami, which I think rounds up this post quite well:

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."

Love,

Belle x

Be This Guy.