Bizet has Carmen describe L’amour as a “rebellious bird.” Love, her basic message seems to be, lies outside our control. When she says, “Love me not, then I love you,” she voices both the fictional plots of unrequited love and the actual histories of many people, possibly, even you. Love, in Carmen’s operatic interpretation, has never followed a law, never been ordered, never been predictable.
She’s right, of course. There’s no accounting for how we grow into love or how love, like some bird, flies suddenly into our lives (or, for some, how it suddenly flies out of our lives). For most, if not all of us, the nature of love appears to be beyond articulation. What can we say? “I love you”? Let’s not go into how much. Much is a quantity. Even if there were measurable degrees of love, they might never be applicable when love either comes or leaves like a wild bird. The unexpectedness of love might be what makes it so attractive to us. The Carmen libretto says, “You think you hold it fast; it flees/You think you’re free; it holds you fast.”
Generally, we do like things to be in a recognizable place. Thus, we have furniture with drawers and rooms with purposes. That desire for associative place seems to extend into our emotions, and that sets up a scenario for perplexity. “Love me not, then I love you,” Carmen sings. “When least expected, there it is!”
No place. No time. No predictability. No age. No particular physical appearance. No drawer with folded, matching socks. No neat arrangement. No room with special purpose. Any place. Any time. Any age. Any appearance.
Exciting, isn’t it. Almost like being in a haunted house or on a theme park ride. The unexpected is what you expect. Avenues that make no sense. Crossroads without traffic lights. Robins that suddenly appear in spring and suddenly disappear in winter. If love were otherwise, would we bother with it any more than we bother with a sock drawer filled with matched pairs?
Maybe in our order we crave disorder; and then, having disorder, we try organizing. Love bounces between the two, and its arrival in the midst of disorder lasts until we order, when love’s natural entropy unexpectedly starts the process all over.
“Toreador, love awaits you,” the chorus of Carmen sings, and that leads to a bit of advice. Neither wait nor look for it. Love chooses its time and its place. Don’t like that advice because you want something ordered and predictable? Arrange your sock drawer. Predict the arrival of robins in spring and their leaving in winter.