love love hate
hate hate love
odi et amo
hate hate love
love love hate
why it’s like this i do not know
often you bark too much
sometimes you cost too much money
then you look at me with your
big brown eyes
and i’m a goner
love love hate
hate hate love
odi et amo
hate hate love
love love hate
why it’s like this i do not know
the business of waltzing
between poles of regard
is a tango i find
torturous
and i cant stop
love love love
hate hate hate
odi et amo
you’re soft
you’re my adventure buddy
you cuddle and you lick
you chew, you eat a rabbit
then you throw up and eat your sick
but never in the house
love love love
love love love
amo infinitum
love love love
love love love
canto repetitum
todays audio is a little toss-off i wrote last august for my songwriting group. the prompt was “the business of waltzing”. so of course, i wrote… a waltz about how difficult carl was being at the time.
i’m gonna be honest, i’m scraping the bottom of the barrel with this episode. or at least, that’s where this essay will begin. i don’t have the energy or focus to record something new for you. my initial idea for the episode just seemed blah when i went to start on it this morning. so i am scrapping it and now scraping the bottom of the afore-mentioned barrel to find something to talk about. but! i am sure i will write my way into something profoundly meaningful and hopefully resonant and inspirational for your life too. not to put any pressure on myself.
i’m in a weird in-between time. maybe you feel the same. the holidays are long past. the superbowl was almost a month ago. summer seems a long way off. i’m wrapping up a few tiny projects. i’m waiting on several job applications. i’m about to dive deep into my work at the university of chicago for the spring. where i will be teaching a class, continuing to rewrite our musical, and prepping for a big set of performances of said musical in june. but that all hasn’t quite started yet.
the weather here in western massachusetts is most certainly contributing to this limbo feeling. our days alternate between huge snowstorms and glorious warm sunfests. is it winter? or spring?
or maybe i should say a new england spring is a “both/and” type of situation. that feels much more how we say things in 2023, right? we are not one thing or another. we acknowledge the nuance of our lives. we resist binaries. things are complicated. if the pandemic taught us anything, maybe it’s this?
but who needs a pandemic to teach us anything? firstly, i would happily learn this lesson from any source other than a deadly disease that upended and cost many lives. secondly, this “lesson” of “both/and” is nothing new. it is in fact, ancient.
when i was in high school, i took latin as my foreign language. i talked about this in an earlier essay where i explained my personal motto: pertinacia omnia rerum. defiance in all things! who ever wants to say their parents were right? but my parents were right! it was a very good thing to take latin. it’s made me a way better writer, not to mention crossword puzzle solver.
in my last year of latin, we spent some time reading the works of the roman poet catullus. what a guy! a sensitive party boy with a wounded, wry sense of humor. the idea of a declared sexuality or sexual identity is a modern concept, so catullus was happily unbothered by the gender of his sexual partners or objects of his small and large romantic obsessions. i remember my mind being blown at the time by the idea that something so ancient could be so filthy, clever, and funny. sadly, though the fax of life is prone to rabbit-holes, we don’t have time for a catullus-shaped one. but if you are interested, check this out this poem. content warning: it is highly offensive and NSFW.
there is one catullus poem in particular that has stuck with me all these years. it’s the famous one known as Catullus 85 or by its first line “odi et amo”.
the full poem is this:
Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.
basically it says:
i hate and i love. you might ask me why i do this?
i don’t know, but it happens and i am tortured.
i mean, first of all, girl, i can relate! talk about a “both/and”. i am a libra and extremes are extremely my jam. but the power of this poem is its brevity and truth, right? we love, we hate. what else is there to say? sometimes we can’t tell the difference or stop doing it. passion contains all that and more. it’s a cycle that as humans is very enticing and equally hard to extricate ourselves from. be it love, chocolate, politics, or your puppy.
another reason i have always loved this poem is an exercise that our latin teacher had us do with it. she had us take just the famous first three words, odi et amo, and make a list of the many ways that could be translated. in latin, where something is in word order doesn’t give you its meaning. the actual shape of the word, what ending it has tells you how it functions in the sentence. odi et amo is deliciously unclear. it could be any of the following:
i hate and i love
i love and i hate
hate and love
love and hate
i hate what i love
i love what i hate
i despise, i detest, i loathe
or i relish, i savor, i adore
you get the idea. the coolest part was hearing all my classmates’ lists too. we all did it differently, and none of us was wrong.
i’ve used latin in songs before. and whether it shows up in ways obvious or not, the skill of translating has shaped me as a writer. as a translator, you have options. words in different languages are never perfectly equivalent. time, culture, context make for a fantastic blurring of straight comparisons and direct definitions. this leeway, this slippage, is endlessly fascinating to me. and it is where the art lies. the many ways i can choose to express an idea is what makes me sound like me, my personality and talent as an artist is in my choices. this is what my latin teacher was trying to show with her “odi et amo” exercise.
for example
the business of waltzing
between poles of regard
is a tango i find
torturous
and i cant stop
“the business of waltzing” was the prompt from our group leader, matt the electrician. everyone got the same prompt. you can think of that like the latin in the poem. we are all looking at the same language, but then what do we as individuals do with it?
i wrote this little stanza first, just off the top of my head. “poles of regard” is a weird phrase, but i was into it. regard as a noun! then i thought of different dances besides the waltz. i have always been partial to a tango. i think they are inherently playful and therefore they are fantastic containers for heavy subjects, like funerals. by time i wrote “torturous and i can’t stop”, i was clearly in “odi et amo” territory, and i had the rest of the song in a flash.
at that moment, in august of 2022, carl was serving me very big “odi et amo” energy. he was approaching his first birthday. he still had his balls. he was deciding if he wanted to listen to me. all the time. he was getting huge. he was knocking people in the face with his enthusiastic greetings. there was blood and bruises. and neighbors yelling at me. he was deeply excitable. and very very vocal. i actually couldn’t take him anywhere. i was having a serious crisis about the perpetual consequences of my choice to change my life and bring him into my home and heart.
of course, i know now that that hard moment passed. neutering helped. so did time and patience. and some sessions with a great trainer. and i had a lot of therapy sessions about accepting carl for the dog he is, not the silent shadow i imagined i would be getting. he is a manifestation of my own wildness. which i also hate and love and tortures me. and i wouldn’t change me or carl for anything.
amo infinitum
i love infinitely.
canto repetitum
i sing over and over.
well, i think i did it! i certainly feel like i delivered a better episode than i thought i would when i started. and honestly, what matters most to me is that i took the time to make myself write, whether i felt like it or not. showing up regularly, as i am, as you are, is really where it’s at. thanks for taking the ride and listening.
x erin
ps - here is where carl was the entire time i wrote this essay
pps - the song tells the truth! he loves to throw up then eat it, but he never does that in the house. also, he’s never shit in the house! good boy!
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
my original idea for this episode was inspired by this version of “the best things in life are free” from the final episode of White Lotus. and i was reminded that the song also appears in the episode too.
just for randomness, one of my favorite SNL sketches ever.
i’m missing football. this article helped.
speaking of, i loved rihanna’s halftime show. it was so loose and easy. and just good enough. in case you didn’t know, this is one of my favorite songs ever!
more sports singing: marvin gaye’s rendition of the national anthem.
legendary amy ray released a song and video about the legendary rita houston, who was my friend and whom i miss so very much.
my friend
has a wonderful substack. here is their essay about what we can and can't see in a home photo album of gay men.need to cry? how about this pod where people share stories of their pet’s deaths. it’s actually lovely and cathartic.
flaco the owl is thriving.
i have a book to recommend, and i’m not even halfway through it. BEAVERLAND.
UPCOMING SHOWS
August 12 - Dalton MA
Scenic Songs Hike + Concert at Notchview
Save The Date!
Oct 14 - Nov 11 - Seattle WA
Miss You Like Hell at Strawberry Theatre
MORE INFO
If you have further questions or concerns about COVID protocols, please contact the venues directly.
Reminder, Erin does not appear in productions of Miss You Like Hell
i hate and i love