Stuck In My Brain - Tumblr Posts

There’s something about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice that’s held my soul in a vise gripe since I saw Hadestown

And I think it’s the fact that the story is of course, devastating, but it doesn’t mean anything

Not to say that it’s meaningless, but that so many other stories in mythology are used to explain natural phenomena or take down histories or tell cautionary tales about what happens when you mess with the gods

No, in this case, it’s just a tale of two people who loved each other, and would go to the ends of the earth to save one another. It wasn’t about destiny or being forced down some awful path or making terrible mistakes and being filled with regret. At its core, this is just a story about love, in it’s most human vulnerability and strength.

I mean, think about someone you love. Doesn’t even have to be a romantic partner. I know, in my absolute core, that I would go to the ends of the earth and back and around again for my partner. I’d die for my sister. I’d live for my dog.

Sure, Orpheus walks the lonely road to hell and nearly makes it back. And maybe, sometime in history, there was a man named Orpheus who loved his wife and when she was taken from him, he followed, in one way or another, never to return. It’s not vengeance. It’s not destiny. In a way, it’s not even valor or chivalry or bravery. It’s just love. At its core, it’s just love. And maybe the people left behind honored that by telling their story.

So it is a sad song, an old tale. And we sing it again and again, because we hope that if someday we have to follow our lives into hell with no hope of returning, there will be some vestige of our love left behind.

So if I am remembered for anything, thousands of years after I have gone, let it be for my love.

I was here, and I loved, and I left with love, and I didn’t get to come back, so sing my song, in my absence, with love.