indie love - What Comes First?

This is a post from the morning after the Kinks Konvention tribute night… that I did not attend. I’m feeling freaked out at having made the decision not to go, but a few factors made it necessary, and a few other factors hopefully make it ok:

My love is sick, and he’s never sick. Last night, this weekend, I knew I just needed to be here as much as possible. But with emails in my inbox from a lot of wonderful and also intimidatingly talented people saying “see you at the Kinks show” and the promise of some really fun interviews, I was hugely worried about NOT going; worry for my love was fueling wider, fuzzier wells of worry. My planning skills were in a froth last night, but then I called our site editor Tessa Smith. She calmly untangled me quick, I suspect without even realizing the state I was in, or how much she was helping. She figured out who to call and how to coordinate the rest of the team going to cover the show, and hopefully (fingers crossed) they had a great time, and will have some cool content coverage coming for the rest of us.

In all likelihood, I missed a once in a lifetime show last night. I would have loved to see The Stills and The Besnard Lakes in particular doing The Kinks. But what comes first?

Running a project with your love puts a strain on a relationship that can be unbearable. Lots of people warned us about this, and it’s true, you can lose the distinction in your mind between the two (project and relationship) and start to think that anything done for your project is done for your love, but it ain’t so.

Love needs to know that it comes first, that you’ll walk through fire and miss a great show to care for it, love is that kind of animal, even if your lover is the type to say “no, no, you should probably go.”

The trick, I think, in protecting love without losing the outside world, is in remembering that love can come in all kinds of colours and connections. Even boring old boy/girl monogamy is surrounded by other links and extensions of this goodly multiplying thing called love. For me the trick was in remembering (which can be hard from inside a worry fuzz) that Elran and I are not alone in Indyish, that lots of other kinds of love have built it beyond our little 2 step. It is, after all, based on the idea that interconnection can provide resiliency.

Love, (indie or otherwise, I think, though indie gets the love of gift economy better then many) is in asking for help. It’s in trusting that other people will treat your love well, and understand when you need to put your poor sick love buddy first, even if you can’t do much more then bring soup, snuggle, and watch some bad tv.