Weekend Music
Ok, let me explain why I'm posting this very gloomy song, which is hardly what one would expect for something referred to as "weekend music." It's mainly because the title, which is also the chorus, has been floating around in my head since I posted the dream of the young lady in the Occupy Wall Street protest. Her dream, in case you didn't watch that video, was of dismembered corpses, which she saw as representing the human race torn apart by lack of love.
What she still has to learn is what the song says: love will tear us apart. In this fallen world, because it is fallen, love does not bring relief from suffering, but rather suffering itself. As soon as you begin to love, you have made yourself available for suffering, and you will suffer, one way or another. "Man is in love, and loves what vanishes." (Yeats)
Those bodies are not dismembered not only by hate, or by lack of love, but by love itself. Only after love has torn you apart will it put you back together again, more whole and more joyful than you were before, so that you won't regret the suffering. But you can't escape it, except by not loving, and that's hell.
If you can't make out most of the words in this song, don't worry. They describe a troubled marriage and are not in themselves especially memorable apart from that one line.
If you aren't familiar with Joy Division, here is their short sad story. And here is another video which shows the band performing the song. I didn't use it above because embedding is disabled for it. Also, it's preceded by a short commercial.
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a comment