Love is life. Life is love.
“Maybe the private, love life was not forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.“
The book literally smothers you with love beads and although the story ends tragically, in a strange way I was happy for all these people that experienced a particular depth in their lives. Epic love demands extreme efforts, otherwise coming into the open only in exceptional and the most dramatic circumstances.
All events are initiated with a love of all levels: imaginary, platonic, friendly, mature, forgotten, passionate... with icing on the cake. Despair and sadness joined two people, who survived, yet lost a loved one in the fatal house.
Why?
To be able to continue their dreams. To be able to survive. To be able to bring back their genuine feelings, which were once grown, and they are so large that they will do everything not to die. "For the love of each other and for the love of all the people they remembered."
“There could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He forgot about the future and past, that the way they lived now would ever be over, that they had not come up with a way to leave. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.“
I wondered what I would do in a similar situation. And above all, we all should ask ourselves, “What can we change today?”, without waiting for the kidnapping, metaphorically speaking.
How much frustration and how many blockages are present in humans. How many dreams and desires are pushed into the background, just because routine takes over the helm. But here in this fatal house, all “naked“ with the same fate, without the pressure of every-day survival, they were able to be guided by the stream of love. Furthermore, you must also remember that success is not the only life guide; that is your primate ability to express love, compassion. The love of a partner, children, friends ...
Too often it is easier to be lonely, overwhelmed with myriad obligations and avoiding genuine contact with people. Today, such behavior is even promoted with all the social media producing instant friends. An internet blackout would simulate similar situations to the Bel Canto, when all our confessions, which are now happening via Facebook or Snapchat, would be performed eye to eye, imagine…
“Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. They were thinking of the last time they had heard her sing and longed for the women who had been beside them then. And when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was impossible to bear.“
Read more about book impressions in Bel Canto (1)