My Year With Proust - Day 219

   "But the beginning of the afternoon's entertainment interested me in quite another way.  It made me realise in part the nature of the illusion of which Saint-Loup was a victim with regard to Rachel, and which had set a gulf between the images that he and I respectively had of his mistress, when we saw her that morning among the blossoming pear trees.  Rachel had scarcely more than a walking-on part in the little play.  but seen thus, she was another woman.  She had one of those faces to which distance - and not necessarily that between stalls and stage, the world being merely a larger theatre - gives form and outline and which, seen from close to, crumble to dust.  Standing beside her one saw only a nebula, a milk way of freckles, of tiny spots, nothing more.  At a respectable distance, all this ceased to be visible and, from cheeks that withdrew, were reabsorbed into her face, there rose like a crescent moon a nose so fine and so pure that one would have liked to be the object of Rachel's attention, to see her again and again, to keep her near one, provided that one had never seen her differently and a close range.  This was not my case, but it had been Saint-Loup's when he first saw her on the stage.  Then he had asked himself how he might approach her, how get to know her, a whole miraculous world had opened up in his imagination - the world in which she lived - from which emanated an exquisite radiance but into which he could never penetrate."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 177-178

Here Proust continues to grapple with his friend Robert's fascination with his mistress, Rachel, the woman that Proust himself had met years before in a brothel.  He had just witnessed Rachel in a small, nondescript part in a small, nondescript play, but had also seen her play a role in organizing a group of her friends to catcall another young actress.  Proust is horrified by that act, as "the idea of deliberate unkindness being too painful for me to bear."  (And I know exactly what he means.  I never mind when people take shots at me, even if they are unintentionally or intentionally cruel, but I feel an almost physical pain when someone else is being mistreated or humiliated)  After that brief observation Proust moves on to his discussion of Rachel's physical appearance and her nature.  She had one of those faces to which distance - and not necessarily that between stalls and stage, the world being merely a larger theatre - gives form and outline and which, seen from close to, crumble to dust.  Standing beside her one saw only a nebula, a milk way of freckles, of tiny spots, nothing more."  However, when she was on the stage she was something much more than that, and not because she was a great (or even a good) actress.  Rather, she had a face that was best seen from a distance, not because she was ugly in appearance but because it somehow came together more completely and beautifully from a distance.  His description of her makes her seem the living embodiment of one of those Impressionist painting where you only can appreciate it by backing away.  Only after seeing Rachel on the stage did Proust begin to get some inkling, vague still, of what Robert saw in her.  After seeing her on the stage for the first time Robert was completely smitten and then did her best to approach her as if she here a leading diva, before finally winning her over.  While reading this passage over again I had three Neil Young songs playing in my head: A Man Needs a Maid, Motion Pictures, and Ambulance Blues.  Rachel is somewhere in the middle of the Venn diagram of these three songs.

Discography - Week 16

OK, first's thing first: just a quick reminder that next week, Week 17, is our second thematic week, which will focus on Guilty Pleasures.  This week is the usual tomfoolery, with alternating highs of profound societal analysis and lows of, well, mainly just my posts.  I think the unofficial theme this week may be self-medication in its many forms.

Dave Kelley

Steve Earle, Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain

Lyrically this song has two major qualities which are always favorites of mine.  Most importantly, Earle is being honest in a naked and unflinching way here.  I greatly admire artists in general, and songwriters in particular, who lay it all out there without any bullshit or artifice.  Coy and clever have their place, but are not what I am looking for in great art.  Earle is clearly talking about something he has lived through personally in a brutally frank way.  Earle did not call the Fountains of Wayne hotline when he wrote the song.   The second aspect of the lyrics that gets me is the way that he fools the listener into thinking he is going in one direction until the song's true message is brutally delivered in the fourth verse.

In the first three verses Earle appears to be singing about defeating his addictions to cocaine, booze, and sex.  The tone of his voice does not suggest triumph, but he is very clear that cocaine cannot kill his pain, whiskey's lost it's hold on me, and even sex don't work no more.  Any hope that the song is about overcoming addiction is destroyed in the fourth verse:

"Cause heroin's the only thing

Heroin's the only thing

Heroin's the only thing

The only gift that darkness brings

Heroin's the only thing."

Earle has struggled with cocaine and alcoholism.  He has been married seven times and has talked about spending twenty years following his dick wherever it led him.  He is also a recovering heroin addict and spent time in prison for possession of heroin.  We all see the carnage being caused by heroin.  Working in the court system has given me some frightening insight into what a powerful and lethal addiction it is.  From Earle's experience, it is so powerful that it made him lose interest in all of his other addictions.  The pain in his voice throughout the song is now explained.

The great Townes Van Zant was Earle's mentor.  Earle has recorded with and produced Lucinda Williams and worked extensively with Guy Clark, John Prine, Darrell Scott, and Buddy Miller.  Among the many artists who have covered his songs are Johnny Cash and Tom Petty.  All of these performers have either already been included in our lists or certainly will be in the next nine months.  Talent recognizes talent.

Well I am off to brunch.  I have never tried cocaine or heroin, but bacon and breakfast potatoes certainly do kill my pain.  :)

Gary Beatrice

The Gourds, Gin and Juice

Ok, I admit that Gin and Juice is offensive in every way. I generally do not care for songs that reference bitches and hos, nor do I love the genre of bluegrass versions of rock songs. But damn this song rocks, and I do not view it as a parody of the original as much as a tribute (although the Gourds surely knew this was funny, especially since they maintained the references to Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Compton). And these two points constitute my entire justification for including  it in this blog. Actually point three: I love the line "Got my mind on my money and my money on my mind."

Dave Wallace

Car Seat Headrest, Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales 

Is Car Seat Headrest the next great rock band?  Is that even a meaningful distinction anymore?  I don't know the answers to those questions, but I do know that I've been totally digging their new album, Teens of Denial.  This song is my favorite thing on the album, a a somber rumination on post-party melancholia.  I can't get the "It doesn't have to be like this/Killer Whales" chorus out of my head (although I'm not sure what killer whales have to do with the theme of the song), and his wordless vocalizing at the end of the song is awesome.

Dave Mills

Steve Earle, Jerusalem

This is the title track from Steve Earle's 2002 album, which, for any longtime listeners to his work, isn't really anything new. But I like a good dose of his music every now and then, as he creates a kind of protest music that is far too difficult to find in today's musical landscape. Maybe this album gets a bit too preachy at times, and it definitely doesn't break any ground stylistically, but it still feels gutsy, given that it was released about 1 year after 9/11. You may remember the national spirit at the time, and the soundtrack that accompanied it -- Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" for example (notice the lack of an oxford comma in his title -- a clear sign of an inferior musician). Earle's album included tracks like "John Walker's Blues," at attempt to explore the human psychology of "The American Taliban" and Amerika v 6.0, a critique of the lack of critical activism in contemporary America. Most tracks on the album are direct or allegorical critiques of what America has become, a collective challenge to imagine a better response to the 9/11 attacks than Toby Keith's version. Again, this feels gutsy for that time. The title song is actually the final song of the album. "Jerusalem" is a simple, classic folk song, complete with gritty blues harp opening and bridge, and chugging percussion. (Back in the day when some friends and I would get together to play music, this was always one of our favorites to play, as it is simple, straightforward, energetic, and fun). Lyrically, after an album full of songs focused on the problems of the world, Earle takes up the tradition of John Lennon's "Imagine", and invites us to hope for a day in which religion is no longer a cause for war, a world in which rather than building walls ("for every wall you build around your fear/a thousand darker things are born in here" -- from "Truth," on the same album), "there'll be no barricades then/there'll be no wire or walls/and we can wash all this blood from our hands /and all this hatred from our souls." It will, no doubt, strike many as naïve, and perhaps it ultimately is. But if we can't imagine a better world, then we have nothing to strive for, and no reason not to follow Toby Keith in "putting a boot up the ass" of those we regard as enemies.

Miranda Tavares

Greenland is Melting, No More Sorry Songs

About 6 years ago, Nate and I went to see a random show. We had never heard of any of the bands, but tickets were $5, there were 4 bands, and we liked those odds. It was at the upstairs of the old Southgate House, a small venue, and drew about 30-40 people, a respectable number for that room. For some reason, every band would come off the stage and come up to us, ask us how we liked the show, how we heard about it, etc. As the last band took the stage, we realized that the audience was made up solely of band members and their guests, and we were literally the only two unfamiliar faces in the crowd. That was when it really hit me what it means to be a musician: the highs, the lows; playing for an empty room, playing for an enthusiastic crowd; playing for free to a bunch of your buddies and two random strangers that you might have made $3.50 off of after the venue took its share. And these guys didn't have to come talk to us. They drew attention to the fact that we were the only people in the room they didn't know. We would have left feeling like we saw some great music with some really enthusiastic people. We would have been impressed with the fan base. But these guys were not rock stars, and they didn't try to act like it, and it impressed me that they seemed to want us to like them as much as we clearly liked their music. 

Greenland is Melting is the third band we saw that night, and remains a staple on out playlist despite them throwing in the towel last year. I highly recommend everyone check out their version of Wayfaring Stranger. The harmony is killer. But No More Sorry Songs is my favorite. The lyrics have some cool phrasing - "I've been losing sleep and drugs and thoughts and time and tiny pieces of my mind that you borrowed without asking me" and "this is hope in the form of a song that no one should ever hear"- , the cadence is gently infectious, and, again, that harmony. A jaunty little stand up bass line, too. 

This band also told me one of my favorite jokes: A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken lights a cigarette, sighs, and says, "Well, that answers that question."

Nate Bell

Tool, Opiate

I first thought of submitting this song based on the current political cycle, and for that, the lyrics couldn't be more fitting.

"Choices always were a problem for you.

What you need is someone strong to guide you.

Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow,

what you need is someone strong to guide you..

like me, like me, like me, like me"

Tool has always had great lyrics along with a very solid industrial sound, not as mechanical as many, but with amazing bass lines and very solid guitar work. They excel in the lyrical content however.

Like I had said, the political context made me think of this song. However, on the plane ride down to NC this Thursday, we were treated to an hour long monologue from across the aisle by a 19-20 year old who rambled loudly about his Faith nonstop. I don't begrudge a person real faith, but in this entire hour I heard not a single mention of the content of his belief, nor what purpose his mission trips achieved, but rather just a droning recitation of how his faith was stronger and truer than various family members, how his peers didn't adhere completely to "full christian values" (undefined and not explicated), and how he had to "minister" to various people. His self centered narcissism parading as Faith made me think the original content referring to Marx's favorite line, still holds true out there in the wider world with those who wield the word faith as a weapon.

"If you want to get your soul to heaven, trust in me.

Now don't judge or question.

You are broken now, but faith can heal you.

Just do everything I tell you to do."

Tool's "Opiate"  is the perfect choice for hating the cult of personality we currently see flaunting itself in the news every day lately.

Cyndi Brandenburg

10000 Maniacs, PeaceTrain

I am trying to remain apolitical on this blog, but the political heat
generated by the current firestorm is getting harder and harder to
keep at bay.  This version of the song, which was one of my favorites
when it was first released in 1987 on the 10000 Maniacs' In My Tribe
album, has a pretty simple message whose continued relevance is hard
to deny.  Listening to its upbeat optimistic rhythm makes me feel
happy in spite of myself.  And considered in its historical context,
it represents the curious and circuitous nature of stormy differences,
divisiveness, and reconciliation.

For those of you who don't know the backstory, the song was originally
written by Cat Stevens in 1971 at the height of the Vietnam War.  (A
time I remember well, despite being so young, because of my privileged
liberal upbringing and a father who at the time was an administrator
at a big state university, putting out trash can fires, keeping the
police off campus grounds, bailing his faculty members out of jail,
and the like.) A few years later, Stevens converted to Islam and
changed his name to Yusef.  In 1989, after he made some controversial
comments related to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie,  Natalie
Merchant had her version of the song removed from subsequent editions
of the album.  The 10000 Maniacs' version wasn't  re-released until
2004 on their compilation album Campfire Songs:  The Popular, Obscure,
and Unknown Recordings.

I find the lessons embedded here to be strangely hopeful.  I guess
when it comes right down to it, pendulums can always be counted on to
swing back the other way.  So let's head down to the river, hop on the
peace train, and figure out how to get our individual and collective
shit together.  Come on people.  We've got this.

Gary Scudder

Gillian Welch, Barroom Girls

I know I've championed this song before back in the days of our monthly Facebook chats, but I can't help myself.  As I proposed before, I just think this is akin to a perfect song, and by that I mean that it's hard to imagine that you could do anything to improve it.  Barroom Girls starts with one of the great first lines, "Well the night came undone/ like a party dress/ that fell at her feet/ in a beautiful mess."  I'd hate to think how many of my nights have come undone, although not as beautifully.

My Year With Proust - Day 218

   "She was so clumsy with her hands when eating that one felt she must appear extremely awkward on the stage.  She recovered her dexterity only when making love, with that touching prescience of women who love the male so intensely that they immediately guess what will give most pleasure in that body which is yet so different from their own."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 170

Here Proust is commenting on the "dexterity" of Robert's mistress Rachel/Zezette.  During the course of this Proust discussion we've talked quite a bit about how we are all combinations, both emotionally and sexually, of every one of our lovers.  That, in turn, brings up an interesting nature vs. nurture question, which has also popped up occasionally over the last several months.  Essentially, are some people just naturally better lovers than others?  Sure, you can be "taught" to be a better lover, and experience is everything (which is why you really shouldn't complain if your lover is experienced, because you're reaping the benefits of it).  But are some people just genetically/naturally/emotionally predisposed to being a better lover?  So much of this depends upon being madly in lover, certainly, because if you're crazy in love then you'll do anything to please the other person, and that desire and enthusiasm usually translates into the bedroom.  I suspect it's more complex than that, and in some ways the physical question here is a microcosm of the larger emotional issue in that so much of your proficiency as a lover, and both the emotional and physical sides of being a lover, is a reflection of being a good listener.  If you're paying attention your lover will tell you what they need, either consciously and logically or unconsciously and urgently.  That being said, there are certainly some people who never learn.  Over the years I've broken up with a couple women partially because they were really bad kissers.  Of course, I also stopped seeing a woman once because she confused Neil Young and Neil Diamond, so clearly you should take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

My Year With Proust - Day 217

   "I fancy nevertheless that, on that precise morning, and probably for the first and only time, Robert detached himself for a moment from the woman whom out of successive layers of tenders he had gradually created, and suddenly saw at some distance from himself another Rachel, the double of his but entirely different, who was nothing more not less than a little whore.  We had left the blossoming orchard and were making for the train which was to take us back to Paris when, at the station, Rachel, who was walking by herself, was recognised and hailed by a pair of common little 'tarts' like herself, who first of all, thinking aht she was alone, call out: 'Hello Rachel, why don't you come with us?  Lucienne and Germaine are in the train, and there's room for one more.  Come on, we'll all go to the rink together.' . . . He not only glimpsed this lift, but saw also in the thick of it a Rachel quite different from the one he knew, a Rachel like those two little tarts, a twenty-franc Rachel.  In short, Rachel had for the moment duplicated herself in his eyes; he had seen, at some distance from his own Rachel, the little tart Rachel, the real Rachel if it can be said that Rachel the tart was more real than the other.  It may then have occurred to Robert that from the hell in which he was living, with the prospect and the necessity of a rich marriage, of the sale of his name, to enable him to go on giving Rachel a hundred thousand francs a year, he might easily perhaps have escaped, and have enjoyed the favours of his mistress, as the two counter-jumpers enjoyed those of their girls, for next to nothing.  But how was it to be done?  She had done nothing blameworthy.  Less generously rewarded, she would be less nice to him, would stop saying and writing the things that so deeply touched him, things which he would quote, with a touch of boastfulness, to his comrades, taking care to point out how nice it was of her to say them, but omitting to mention that he was maintaining her in the most lavish fashion, or even that he ever gave her anything at all, that these inscriptions on photographs, or tenders greetings at the end of telegrams, were but the transformation of gold in its most exiguous but most precious form.  If he took care not to admit that these rare kindnesses on Rachel's part were handsomely paid for, it would be wrong to say - and yet this over-simplification is applied, absurdly, to every lover who has to pay cash, and to a great many husbands - that this was from self-esteem or vanity.  Saint-Loup was intelligent enough to realise that all the pleasures of vanity were freely available to him in society, thanks to his historic name and handsome face, and that his liaison with Rachel had if anything tended to cut him off from society, had led to his being less doubt after.  No; this pride which seeks to appear to be getting for nothing the apparent marks of predilection of the woman one loves is simply a consequence of love, the need to figure in one's own eyes and in other people's as being loved by the person whom one loves so much."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 162-164

Over the course of this reading and discussion of Proust, and, for that matter, my life, I've pondered (often over beers) some of the essential questions of love and life.  For example, I can remember talking to a colleague once about whether or not it was better to be the lover or the beloved.  Essentially, it it better to be crazy in love with someone else or to be the one who is loved passionately.  It seems like an obvious choice, but I would argue that it's not. I think this particular passage brings up another conundrum: is it better to live a lie or to realize the truth?  Robert's mistress runs into two of her friends, "two little tarts," and it's difficult for even Robert, desperately in love, to not understand her true nature.  However, even when Robert knows the truth he can't seem to do anything to free himself.  It seems that Proust is arguing that Robert can't escape because of his own pride as much as anything else. "No; this pride which seeks to appear to be getting for nothing the apparent marks of predilection of the woman one loves is simply a consequence of love, the need to figure in one's own eyes and in other people's as being loved by the person whom one loves so much."  

My Year With Proust - Day 216

   "It was not 'Rachel when from the Lord' who seemed to me of little significance, it was the power of the human imagination, the illusion on which were based the pains of love, that I found very great.  Robert noticed that I seemed moved.  I turn my eyes to the pear and cherry trees of the garden opposite, so that he might think that it was their beauty that had touched me.  And it did touch me in somewhat the same way; it also brought close to me things of the kind which we not only see with our eyes feel also in our hearts.  In likening those trees that I had seen in the garden to strange deities, had I not been mistaken like Magdalene when, in another garden, on a day whose anniversary was soon to come, she saw a human form and 'supposed it was the gardener.' Treasurers of our memories of the golden age, keepers of the promise that reality is not what we suppose, that the splendour of poetry, the wonderful radiance of innocence may shine in it and may be the recompense which we strive to earn, were they not, these great white creatures miraculously bowed over that shade so propitious for rest, for angling or for reading, were they not rather angels?  I exchanged a few words with Saint-Loup's mistress.  We cut across the village.  Its houses were sordid.  But by each of the most wretched, of those that looked as though they had been scorch and branded by a rain of brimstone, a mysterious traveller halting for a day in the accursed city, a resplendent angel stood erect, stretching over it the dazzling protection of his widespread wings of innocence: it was the pear tree in blossom."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 162-163

There are several reasons why I like this passage, featuring typically wonderful Proustian reflections on beauty and meaning, in this case a continuation of his first meeting with Robert and his mistress Zezette (the former prostitute who Proust always refers to as "Rachel when from the Lord").  However, it also got me thinking about Proust's ability - or the ability of any writer or painter or composer for centuries on end - to make subtle references to characters or events from the Old or New Testament.  I've often talked to my students about how Renaissance painters would include very subtle allusions to stories from the Bible or from Greek or Roman mythology, knowing that an educated audience would get the reference.  Sadly, those days are long past.  On the one hand it is representative of the fact that we lead a more secular existence in a more multicultural world, and that, I think, is a very good thing.  It also means that we have many more beautiful cultural threads to weave into our intellectual tapestry, which is one of the reasons why I'm working on my long-delayed book on the epics; a way of introducing the Ramayana or Journey to the West or the Shahnameh to a more general audience.  That said, the other obvious reason why artists can no longer make the same subtle references with any certainty of recognition is that we are increasingly a society steeped in ignorance.  What is more, in a shameless society we don't even feel bad about it.  One of the sad lessons of Trump's popularity is that garish, brutal, idiotic form is dominating content as never before.  As a society we far failing educationally, both to impart knowledge but also to share the beauty of the attainment of knowledge.

My Year With Proust - Day 215

   "I realised then how much a human imagination can put behind a little scrap of a face, such as this woman's was, if it is the imagination that has come to know it first; and conversely into what wretched elements, crudely material and utterly valueless, something that had been the inspiration of countless dreams might be decomposed if, on the contrary, it has been perceived in the opposite manner, by the most casual and trivial acquaintance.  I saw that what had appeared to me to be not worth twenty francs when it had been offered to me for twenty francs in the brothel, where it was then for me simply a woman desirous of earning twenty francs, might be worth more than a million, more than family affection, more than all the most coveted positions in life, if one had begun by imagining her as a mysterious being, interesting to know, difficult to seize and to hold.  No doubt it was the same thin and narrow face that we saw, Robert and I.  But we had arrived at it by two opposite ways which would never converge, and we would never both see it from the same side. That face, with its looks, its smiles, the movements of its mouth, I had known from the outside as being that of a woman of the sort who for twenty francs would do anything that I asked.  And so her looks, her smiles, the movements of her mouth had seemed to me expressive merely of generalised actions with no individual quality, and beneath them I should not have had the curiosity to look for a person.  But what to me had in a sense been offered at the start, that consenting face, had been for Robert an ultimate goal towards which he had made his way through endless hopes and doubts, suspicions and dreams.  Yes, he had given more than a million francs in order to have, in order that others should not have, what had been offered to me, as to all and sundry, for twenty"

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 161-162

Proust continues to reflect upon the seemingly inexplicable situation wherein his friend Robert's mistress is the same prostitute that years before he, Proust, could have purchased for twenty francs.  "Yes, he had given more than a million francs in order to have, in order that others should not have, what had been offered to me, as to all and sundry, for twenty."  First off, the notion that Robert had spent a million francs so that he could have her - but also so that others could not have her - I think is key here.  I wonder how often our love affairs and marriages are based on an almost Mercantilist vision of a limited world of commodities; if I have something then you, by definition, don't have something, so I am richer.  Are marriages really just emotional protectionism?  Truthfully, we don't really want that woman all that dramatically, but insert the image of her committing some carnal gymnastics with another man and we go insane.  We're really much more interested with someone not sleeping with our wives than we actually sleeping with them ourselves.

This is another passage dealing with the role of emotion in stamping perception and memory.  "I realised then how much a human imagination can put behind a little scrap of a face, such as this woman's was, if it is the imagination that has come to know it first; and conversely into what wretched elements, crudely material and utterly valueless, something that had been the inspiration of countless dreams might be decomposed if, on the contrary, it has been perceived in the opposite manner, by the most casual and trivial acquaintance."  As Proust recounts, he and Robert had arrived at their perception of Rachel by two very different paths, and those paths, and thus their perception of her, would never merge.  I'm beginning to think that there is really no such thing as a legitimate, real relationship, simply because there is no such thing as a legitimate, real understanding of another person.  Everything is a jumbled series of perceptions driven by emotions and physical urges.  It's amazing any of us get through the weekend with the same person.

My Year With Proust - Day 214

   "Suddenly Saint-Loup appeared, accompanied by his mistress, and then, in this woman who was for him the epitome of love, of all the sweet things of life, whose personality, mysterious enshrined as in a tabernacle, was the object that occupied incessantly his toiled imagination, whom he felt that he would never know, as to whom he asked himself what could be her secret self, behind the veil of eyes and flesh - in this woman I recognised instantaneously 'Rachel when from the Lord,' she who, but a few years since (women change their situation so rapidly in that world, when they do change) used to say to the procuress: 'To-morrow evening, then, if you want me for someone, you'll send round for me, won't you?'

   And when they had 'come around' for her, and she found herself alone in the room with the 'someone,' she knew so well what was required of her that after locking the door, as a womanly precaution or a ritual gesture, she would quickly remove all her clothes, as one does before the doctor who is going to examine one, and did not pause in the process unless the 'someone,' not caring for nudity, told her that she might keep on her shift, as specialists do sometimes, who, having an extremely and being afraid of their patient's catching a chill, are satisfied with listening to his breathing and the beating of his heart through his shirt.  On this woman whose whole life, whose every thought, whose entire past and all the men by whom at one time or another she had been had, were to me so utterly unimportant that if she had told me about them I should have listened only out of politeness and scarcely heard what she had said, the anxiety, the torment, the love of Saint-Loup had been concentrated in such a way as to make, out of what was for me a mechanical toy, the cause of endless suffering, the very object and reward of existence.  Seeing these two elements separately (because I had known 'Rachel when from the Lord' in a house of ill fame), I realised that many women for the sake of whom men live, suffer, take their own lives, may be in themselves or for other people what Rachel was for me.  The idea that anyone could be tormented by curiosity with regard to her life amazed me.  I could have told Robert of any number of her unchastities, which seemed to me that most uninteresting things in the world.  And how they would have pained him.  And what had he not given to learn them, without avail!"

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 160-161

Whoops.  Robert's mistress, the great love that was causing him such suffering and driving him to the edge of madness, turned out to be the Jewish prostitute, "Rachel when from the Lord," that Proust had met years before in a brothel.  Not surprisingly, Proust is stunned, not only at the coincidence - which seems almost Dickensian - but that Robert would care about such a woman.  Proust's amazement is not based on the fact that she had been a prostitute, because Robert apparently didn't know that, but rather that, at least to Proust, she was so ordinary and boring.  "The idea that anyone could be tormented by curiosity with regard to her life amazed me.  I could have told Robert of any number of her unchastities, which seemed to me that most uninteresting things in the world.  And how they would have pained him."

As we know, love is so idiosyncratic and so malleable and so subjective.  "I realised that many women for the sake of whom men live, suffer, take their own lives, may be in themselves or for other people what Rachel was for me."  How many times in our lives have we found ourselves in Proust's situation?  We're meeting the girl friend or the fiancee of a friend, the one who is "the one," and we realize that we've committed some manner of carnal impropriety with them on a one night stand or a friends with benefit situation.  Essentially, you and the woman, mutually, have whored yourselves out to the other person as part of an exchange, with the very obvious difference that the woman, your friend's great love, had a freedom of action that most women in a brothel would never have.  Still, it was an exchange, and neither or you viewed the other person as anything other than a trading partner.  This is why Proust's clinical description where he compares his trip to the brothel to going to a doctor's office works so brilliantly.  But to your friend, as to Robert, the other person is the stuff of romantic legend.