Personally, I often think that love is smoking your last cigarette, and knowing that you'll never smoke again, because your are faced with something fantastic (or have something fantastic in your face) which makes that you don't want to smoke anymore.
My hunch is that human awareness is best categorised in terms of subconscious, subjective, intersubjective, objective, reality-transforming, and transcendent (these forms build on each other). Different facets of love apply to each of those forms of awareness. But as I suggested, love is contained in practices and relations involved in interchanges between people - acts of giving, getting, receiving and taking (which, in a market economy, become to an extent reified). Forms of awareness mediated those interchanges, but those interchanges go beyond that awareness, such being the limitations of human consciousness. On that foundation, I could devise a praxiological theory of love and so on, which explicates all the different permutations there are. But, you can analyse that and bore that to death, and such a theory would be only as satisfactory as the ability to implement the theory; and in my experience, it is possible to theorise far more than you can put into practice, i.e. a scholar can have far too much theory, making his practice one-sided, just as a practicist can have far too much practice and not enough theory, making his practice also one-sided. That aside, the "transcendent" part of human awareness cannot be theorised using logical operators, it can at most be named, but even the naming is not free from multiple interpretations or alternative namings, so, it is kind of poetic. A mystical statement is a statement the object of which is indefinite, hence prone to paradoxes which refer to the contradictions in human experience. Thus, the Koran suggests that whereas poets have their role, you shouldn't think that poetry can substitute for other forms of awareness, especially in regard to leadership (to get the full flavour of the idea you really have to follow the Arabic, but I do not understand Arabic). I just got back from a trip to the Bijlmer which was enjoyable, and you could see a lot of love there, in fact quite a few people were smiling, unusual for Amsterdam, except on holidays, when it's sunny. As I got back home, one of my neighbours said in passing, "you're naive". Which probably I am in certain aspects (I don't know to which part of my behaviour he was referring, the interview, talking to particular people, or not picking up a girl, or something like that). It's a funny culture here really, because people are both very judgemental and very tolerant, i.e. both strong opinions and live-and-let-live. There's always supposed to be something wrong with me, especially since I rarely join in Dutch culture these days (because I often experience it as rather harsh, corrupt, criminal, heartless and exploitative if I get hypersensitive; I don't like the Dutch circuses either). Dutch people like to think about what other people deserve or do not deserve, whereas I am thinking about dessert. Probably as regards pop music, the love song I like the best is a very simple, calm and modest number John Lennon wrote, called straightforwardly "Love" (very literal, rather than metaphoric), which has terrific harmonics in it, from a musical point of view (I actually like a version of it done by a female singer better, she has a fuller, more modulated voice, larger tonal range, more conviction, pathos and dignity in it, but I have forgotten who it was, I saw it on TV once; it's difficult to sing, so it actually sounds good rather than pathetic). At that time he wrote it, JL had been doing his Primal Scream stuff with Dr Arthur Janov, trying to get his pain out through the vocal chords, so his singing wasn't the best anyhow, rather raw. Ah wel, you tend to like the music you grew up with, that is really anchored in your experience. Arguably pop music is about sex, not about love, but really pop music is mostly about whatever is popular, I would think, and the themes change. Jurriaan
