She gets me. And I her. And we have never met. Our mediums are different though the message is the same. Love is horrible and beautiful. It will give us life and be the death of us all. It is simply the best and the worst thing that could ever happen in our lives. Those who have experienced the better part of love know what I am speaking of. So do the latter. With one person we make love. And with another we have sex.  With one person we stay until morning. And then the next. And then the next. And with another we shower and leave. For I believe that it is the accumulation of all these things that make love what it is really is. Unchained. Cruel and amazing. How is that we can fall so madly for a person who doesn’t return our calls and yet feel nothing for someone who would wash our feet with their hair? Its just plain stupid.
Neil Gaiman, and early American novelist, summed it up best when he wrote, “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. “

My point is this. That despite all this, humans have the innate desire to experience these things with another human being. Its a curious thing. Sometimes we write about it. Sometime we attempt to capture it on film. And sometimes we sing about it. When I first heard Gravel Lines by Amy Seeleymy heart melted. It was the most beautiful noise I had ever heard. I turned off the lights and sat there in the dark for hours just listening. It was a rare moment in my life when for the first time my images acquired a soundtrack. Pictures for my ears. The Goodness in E Minor.

Gravel Lines
By: Amy Seeley

What do you expect from me, after these takes, after this
What do you dream in the afternoon?
I’ll never know what’s in your head

Out past the cars on the railway
Out past the city’s finery
We see our breath and connection
Underneath these gravel lines

You, you stole a page from the blanks
How do you weigh all of our fears?
Typical, isn’t it typical
That someone like me would invite you in

We took a drive in the country
Your photographs were never mine
slapped in the face by the questions
Posed by these gravel lines

Dear Amy,
Should this post ever come across your life I want you to know that mine will not be complete until I photograph you with my beloved piano. I would travel near and far. You are stunningly beautiful. Thank you for giving my images something to listen to.

Image by: Shannon Sewell