Edward’s Diary Entry 158: What Now My Love?

Great version here!

Ordinarily, this is a love song about having lost one’s lover. In the original French composed by Gilbert Bécaud (Et maintenant), as well. The English lyrics are by the great songwriter Carl Sigman (1909-2000). But let’s take another look.

It could very well be the story of modern-day, civilised, “soulless” man (and woman). Let’s take the body and the mind as the “given” and the “acquired” from society and memory, and continue on from there. One’s “love” often refers to the “spirit or soul” in mystical and spiritual poetry. So the lament here is not being in contact with one’s “love”, one’s true self. But why would a soul leave somebody? It doesn’t. It cannot leave the body and mind. It is always there behind it, but our identification with outer things, externals like thought-concepts, beliefs and opinions, and our very own sense of self as a mere bodily mechanism (of which we are conscious of very little in any case) and a thinking mind (idem), is what tricks us into thinking that there is nothing else there. Our “love” never leaves us. It is we who leave Her – way down in the subconscious and unconscious part of ourselves. And there She pines for us.

It is true. When the “spirit” or “you” behind you is lost, the feeling is that you can hardly live though another day. You occupy yourself with adventures and entertainment. But you have that uncanny feeling that all your dreams are nothing but ashes. As you wander from stimulus to new stimulus, your hopes and dreams turn to mud.

Yes, you realise somehow that once you could see and feel. But now you’re numb, and quite unreal, because the most real part of you sits hidden in experiential oblivion. And so you walk in darkness. You have no higher goal. And then the songwriter says it plainly – you’re stripped of your heart, your “soul”. The result? The world no longer makes sense; the stars fall; sea and sky get inverted; you’re the hanged man of the Tarot, upside down in a world that’s crazy.

The ultimate consequence is that one is simply a fool. And if you do go on and on, no one cares, no one cries for you. Others are in the same predicament as well. Everyone is obsessed with their own little worlds, and who cares if someone else should live or die?

In the end, there is nothing, a pitiful little good-bye, one’s last good-bye… You’ve wasted your life. How many more lives to go before you find your Soul, your True Self, and understand where you come from? The answer is in the French title “maintenant”, now. Don’t cry about your life. Find out what it’s all about NOW. Before it’s too late.