Love: More than just Power Ballad inspiration?

A humorous look into the cost of love, and the things people do for love and how blinding it can be. Love is a crazy illness that everyone wants to be infected with.

The concept of “Love at What Cost?” is very interesting because there is no clear answer. It is very much a point of view thing. You see people in a bad relationship and you think that it can’t be worth it for them, but to them, it is the cost of love. Love is also the most popular thing in the media. Celebrity gossip is all who is sleeping with, marrying, cheating on, leaving, stalking, or dating who. Name one movie that doesn’t try to incorporate a love story. You cant. Maybe you can, I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I know most of them do. Even movies like The Lorax, Pearl Harbor, That 9/11 movie, and the Pokemon movie have all found a way to unnecessarily stick in a love story. There are movies that the whole point is a love story, and whole genres of movies dedicated to what kind of love story you are about to watch (ie. Romantic Comedy). In music, I would estimate that at least 75% of songs are about love in some form, whether it be new love, the potential for love, long lasting love or the loss of love. Holy crap, do we like to write songs about the loss of love.

It is like the group of philosophers / 80's hair metal band Nazareth prophesied, “Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars. Any heart not tough or strong enough to take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain. Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain. Love hurts. Oooh, love hurts.” Truer words have never been howled.

Many other famous philosophers have expanded on Nazareth’s theory of the pain of love, such as J. Giles Band’s 1980 theory, “Love Stinks,” and Def Leppard’s 1988 doctrine “Love Bites.” While many songs are written about the upside of love, I feel that there are more songs written about the loss of love. I philosophize that this is the case because people like to relate to songs and while its nice to hear a song that reminds you “Oh Ya! I’m in a great relationship and very happy. Hooray!” misery loves company, so it is more comforting to be able to sing (read: yell in a puddle of tears) along with Whitesnake because here, you too, go again on your own, walking down the only road you’ve ever known. One can easily take solace in the notion that even David Coverdale has been hurt, but he got through it and so can you.

So at what cost? All costs. At least that’s how one feels while in love. If you are in love - true, complete, insane and stupid, love – it is, perhaps not impossible, but extremely difficult to recognize the costs of what you are putting into it. Love turns your brain into goo. One cannot reason when they have succumbed to the symptoms of love. I’ve seen situations where a guy knows that the woman of his fancy is likely to hurt him, and takes much time and consideration on whether or not it is worth it to risk this new lady venture and despite all red flags, goes for it anyway – and that is just at the possibility of love! Obviously once it ended terribly, he could look back and realize that that was a terrible mistake, but like they say, “love is blind.” (I’m not sure what 80’s band made that one up… but it must have been an 80’s band, right?!?).

Eventually, some people are able to recognize that even though they are in love, and they care deeply for this person, it is not in their best interest to continue trying to make this relationship work, the most common reason being that the person is not getting the same love in return. That is the ultimate goal: find someone who you can love with all your heart. Find someone that you can give them everything, but someone who is giving just as much back to you. When love works, it is incredible, powerful, and consuming, but when love is bad, it’s like bad medicine. Bad medicine is what I need.