The look of love (is in your eyes)

The reader of nice perceptions (I owe the ghost of Herman Melville around one milion dollars in copyright for the excessive use of this phrase that he uses in “Bartleby the Scrivener”, but the fact is that I just adore it) should have realised already, given the amount of posts produced in work hours, that I have not a very intellectually fulfilling or demanding work. I just have a work who doesn’t satisfy me intellectually at all, but that provides me the liberty to produce these pippe mentali mental ramblings together with many other things that have little to do with office work. The curious fact is that thanks to my work I have realised what I would have liked to do for a living, that is, writing, but, at the same time, is highly improbable that I would ever have known that I “can” write shouldn’t I have this work. I know, you have lost yourselves. It’s the classic example of dog eating his tail.

This morning, while doing the daily work that implies the use of about three neurons combined, I’ve watched again the end of North & South. As no one is listening now, I can say that I’ve wept twice watching this: the first time I’ve seen it and today. And I can assure you that I’ve watched the above scene many and many times.

The key is the look. The absolute look of love that Richard Armitage gives his partner, Daniela Denby-Ashe. I add the tag “Great to be Alive” to this post, because one of the great things of being alive is having the chance to receive a look like that. I have been thinking about love lately, and the fact that if it is better to be a late or an early bloomer. I was not a late bloomer myself (I’ve received the first look of real love at about eighteen, which is definitely not late even if not quite early) but I think that late bloomers appreciate the looks of love more, as have “lived” more and they have earned that look more. They have lived years maybe feeling themselves unappropriate, or weird, thinking: ‘was that slightly plesant feeling all?‘ or ‘Is there something amiss in me that I’m the only one not to have felt like that?‘. When you are in the middle of a look of love, the rest of the world disappears, you feel that kind of connection that goes beyond that precise moment or even that precise person. The problem with those unique glances of love in long-term relationships is that they don’t last forever; they evolve, become something else but from a certain point on are not as heartmelting as they were once.

I’ve spent a good half an hour at home trying to find my copy of Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity” to find a quote but who knows where the book is; I’m quite sure that in a few days I will find it in the third row of one of the libraries looking me mockingly. At the end of the novel Rob, the protagonist, reasons about what is the problem with the relationship with his girlfriend Laura, and arrives to the conclusion that the problem is that there will never be more “first times” with her: no more first appointments, first kisses. This is how I feel about the looks of love; I still send and receive them, but they are no longer as the ones that have made me cry this morning. They are no worst, but are different. I miss those first looks of love but I can always watch again the end of “North and South” to remember how they are like.

This is my favourite version of “The Look of Love”, Diana Krall’s

 

Rewind

More than four months have passed since I came by “North & South” and discovered Richard Armitage. Sounds funny that “discovered”, it reminds me a joke of Roberto Benigni in his film Non ci resta che piangere , when teasing Colombo because he has “discovered America” (no big deal, because the Indians were already there): “is like if I go to Puglia (region in the south of Italy) and say “hey! I’ve discovered Puglia!” but its inhabitants are there from two thousand years!”

Therefore, more than four months have passed and I’ve had enough time to watch all his works (due also to the fact that many tv series are available in youtube) but I have not done it yet, because I always rewind and watch again “North & South”. The final scene of “North & South” is so poetical, beautiful and touching… I’ve lost count of all the times I’ve seen it, Richard and Daniela are perfect in their roles and the scene, although is completely different from the novel, is as moving as the lines written by Margaret Gaskell.

I’m so glad to have discovered Richard Armitage from John Thornton, that character has become something like a permanent basis, a safe harbour. I sail to other destinations, but I always come back to him.