The Joy of Platonic Love

[This is a memoir chapter from The Divine Absurdity of Love: A Memoir and a Novella ]

The party was called Éphémère, a Belle Epoque-themed party, in October 2013. It was hosted by my friend Philippe Lewis, one of the most experienced organizers of play parties in the Bay Area.

Ladies in feather hats and bodices filled the mansion in Sausalito, and men in three-piece suits wore ascot ties. I was there on, believe it or not, a quadruple date—three kinky witches, and me, all on a date with each other in some type of amorphous polyamorous configuration.

At the beginning of the party, we—the four mutual daters—sat in a circle, clasped our hands together in a big ball in the center, blessing the marijuana chocolates we were about to eat. (This was California, where we bless our marijuana.)

Visions of an orgiastic pile of Sapphic love had filled my mind when I organized this quadruple date. Before this vision was consummated, however, the marijuana chocolate hit me hard. I sauntered into a side room to take a sit down and collect myself.

At that moment, a woman sat down to an electric piano, facing the room. She said into the mic that her name was Adey Bell. A black garter peeked through slits of her tight black skirt, while a black corset with touches of red lace flourished upwards. Neck-length bangs with blonde highlights sloped up towards cropped dirty-blonde hair in the back. In the front, the light green of her eyes reflected the candle flickers of the room like flaming absinthe. All accented by… a top hat.

The first moments of her first song knocked me backward. I laid back on the carpet, as if I had been shocked by a river of electrified honey and champagne hitting my ears. By the middle of the first song I started twitching and trembling, in my place on the floor. I had witnessed many explicit sex acts that night already, and now I was the one being penetrated—by her music.

Adey sang:

Power
she’s the best ride in town
she’s knows you’re around
looking to get down

Power
she’s your best friend right now
you’ll never disagree
when she’s got you on her knees

From “Power” by Adey Bell

One of my date-mates came into the room, looking for me. I told her that I needed to listen to this. She said that she and the other two women in our mutual date didn’t feel like sitting and listening to piano music—they wanted to be in one of the main dance rooms or one of the sex rooms. I said I couldn’t do anything else but listen to this music. She said she understood, and we parted ways for the night.

Adey was a siren—and I wasn’t tied to the mast to resist her. (Even though being tied up was on offer at the party). I couldn’t help but follow where Adey’s music was beckoning me.

If my fifteen or nineteen- or thirty-year-old self had heard that my thirty-six-year-old self would abandon the possibility of group sex with three women… in order to listen to music… he would have wanted to know:

What the fuck music was it?!

As Adey dropped deeper into her music, I gave up any pretense of trying to remain composed during her performance. (The marijuana chocolate aided in this.) I lay back, quivering, subsumed into a sonorous orgasm washing over me, as if I had been completely overpowered by a new lover and had no choice but to go on whatever ride she had commandeered for me that night. She didn’t know who I was, yet I was being completely fucked open by her music.

Swallowing catastrophe
swallowing my reality

pushing against it will only make it stronger
we realize, apologize, surrender
we realize, apologize, surrender
I surrender

Swallowing your sympathy
swallowing our integrity
swallowing catastrophe
translating this mystery

From “Surrender” by Adey Bell

Her piano playing was spare and understated—with no flowery asides; it was crisp, intentional, and precise. Her touch managed to be both delicate and forceful at the same time (I’m not sure how she pulled that off). Her voice was, true to her name, like clear like a bell or a champagne flute ringing, with no facade or pretense in between her vocal instrument and her emotion. Her lyrics were moody and enigmatic.

(I learned later that she was twenty-nine, and she had already been playing and mastering her craft for a quarter of a century at that time, since age four. Both her parents had been church organists.)  

I went on, trembling on the floor in terror of the beauty I was witnessing, during the hour of her performance. By the end, I knew I wanted to meet her. I noticed some part of my mind go down its usual pathway when in the presence of a woman I was supremely attracted to: is she single? What should I say to her to make her attracted to me? How can I best seduce her? I already had a massive crush on her.

But as soon as those thoughts arose, I cut them off. For the first time in my life, some previously-undiscovered switch in my mind flipped. I found myself thinking a whole new set of thoughts I’d never experienced before in relation to a beautiful woman:

“Her art is pure,” I heard my mind say. “The last thing she needs is your messy sexual obsessions throwing her off balance. Don’t mess up the purity of her art with your desire to possess her. See how you can be of service to her and her art; nothing more, nothing less.”

After her performance, I walked up to her tentatively. I bought both of her CDs, Rogue and Vesica. As I handed her the cash, I staggered some words out of my mouth, in a nervous, fanboy, starstruck kind of way:

“That… that… that was… I can’t even put words to it. That the most exquisite experience of music I’ve ever had. And I’ve been a devoted music fan and concertgoer for twenty years. I’ve never felt myself surrender so completely and instantaneously to a piece of art. Thank you so so ­much. You gained a true fan tonight. I want to see you playing massive concert halls. I want to do everything I can to spread the word about your art.”

Adey smiled, thanked me, and handed me her card.

The Crush and the Confession

I promoted Adey’s music to my Bay Area social scene, helping her get house concert gigs. I organized several house concerts in my parents’ home for friends.

We became friends. We went on walks, talked art.

She was a trained cosmetologist with a performer’s sense of style, and offered rock-star haircuts as well as wardrobe and fashion consulting as her day job while she pursued her art. I referred her to everyone I knew for hair styling and fashion consulting, and gave her marketing advice for expanding her hair and fashion consulting business so she’d have more funds to support her art.

Over time, my music fanboy crush for Adey grew into an overwhelming romantic crush, the likes of which I had not experienced since high school.

Adey had been in a monogamous relationship the whole time I knew her. Out of respect for her and her partner—and in keeping with the commitment to focus on her art and not my desire—I’d kept my growing crush to myself.

Then, in early 2015, Adey became single. I was recently single too. That was the first time in over a year of deep friendship that we had both been single at the same time. We had been friends, and nothing more.

But now that we were both single, I could not hold back any longer. I needed to tell her how I felt.

My need to tell her about my romantic love for her did not stem from a hope that I thought she might reciprocate my feelings—she had never given me the slightest indication of romantic interest in me; our relationship had always been platonic.

Rather, I felt like my love for her was like a beach ball that I kept trying to hold underwater. I was exerting a huge amount of energy hiding it underwater—and I probably wasn’t hiding it under the water too well anyway.

It was time to let the beach ball pop up out into the open and see where it landed. Then we could both take a deep breath and reorient our relationship based on a shared picture of our emotional realities, rather than me hiding a huge part of my emotional life (directly related to her) from her.

I invited Adey for a walk on a nearby nature trail, and decided that would be the day I told her about my feelings for her. I told her I had something important I wanted to share with her.

On our walk, I felt myself shaking, similar to what I felt when I was going to hold a girl’s hand for the first time in middle school. Finally, the moment of truth had arrived:

“Adey,” I said to her, stopping her among the trees and looking her in the eyes. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I paused, and she looked at me intently.

“I’m madly in love with you,” I said. “You probably already figured that out, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore.”

There it was. I said it. Two sentences. Over a year in the making.

Before she could answer, I blurted out another paragraph: “I want you to know that I love you unconditionally, however you relate to my attraction for you. I never, ever want to make you feel uncomfortable, and I never want things to be awkward between us. Your art is sacred to me, and I don’t want my feelings toward you to influence your creative process in any way. I just needed to tell you what’s true for me.”

Adey looked at me with big eyes, and a big smile. “I am attracted to your mind,” she said. “And I’m attracted to creative collaboration with you. But I’m not attracted to you romantically or sexually.”

I wasn’t crestfallen. I pretty much knew that was going to be her answer, so I had already braced myself for it. But I felt a weight off of me as my feelings towards her were out in the open, and she had responded clearly.  

“I have one question to ask you. And I’m totally fine however answer. But is it OK if I flirt with you? Never anything more than that. But can we flirt together?”

Her eyes open wider. “YES!” she exclaimed. “I LOVE THAT! You just asked me for permission to flirt! Yes, you can flirt. I love you so much, Michael,” she said. She gave me a big hug, the kind of big hug guys receive after they’ve just found out their love interest doesn’t feel romantic about them.

It was the best platonic hug I’d ever received in my life.

The World’s Greatest Friendzone

After my confession/profession, Adey was moving into a new place, and came to crash for a few weeks on my futon in my studio apartment—where I’d moved after my divorce. I told Adey that, while I was still completely in love with her, I wanted to allow myself to feel my desire to be her everything, yet not allow that to put any pressure or expectations or emotional hooks on her. I wanted her to feel completely unhooked around me, completely free.

“I’m getting right with the reality that there’s a part of your heart I’ll never know,” I told her.  

Adey said she appreciated my candor, and my intention to not put anything on her emotionally, and that she trusted my process.

Adey set up her electric piano next to my bed. (It was a small studio, so everything was next to my bed.) During those weeks, she was composing new music. Hearing my favorite artist creating her art in my studio apartment inspired me to do something I had never done before: write poetry.

I’m a nonfiction writer, and had never written poetry before, so I make no claim that my poetry was even slightly good. But this poem during that time did express the delicious emotional masochism I was feeling, with Adey staying with me as I tried to quell my love for her.

I read it to her:

Siren, I want
to smash into your rocks.

To feel everything I knew about myself
splinter violently and sink.

You smirk at the men who
are enchanted by your melody
and profess their eternal love but
do not know they are about to
die between your song
and your watery mountains.

You know I was built for this. 
Not to withstand the impact.
But to be destroyed by it.

To be shredded by the wet
incisors of your truth.

Dance with you in the waves for a moment
before you pull me to the depths.

Rest at the bottom, peaceful, nothing. 

Regroup, re-form. 
Swim up, take first breath, 
find fresh land, away enough
to forget.

And once forgotten, 
to remember again
your song.

And then 
to come back,
refreshed, reborn.
For more 
of your
siren smashing.

A week after I read Adey the poem, she said she had written a new song. She wanted me to be the first person she shared it with. 

I sat on my bed, and she sat at her keyboard next to me, performing the song for an audience of one. She sang:

He said, “I want to be your everything.”
He said, “I’ll be your everything, I’ll do anything.”

I said, “Do you want to see the part of me you’ll never keep?”
And I said, “Do you want to meet the part of me you’ll have to…

Let go.
Let go.

Can I take the risk of loving you knowing that someday you’re going to die?

What a bittersweet reminder.
Bittersweet reminder.

Someday
Someday
Someday
Someday we’re gonna die. . . .

And that’s why

Love is letting go
Love is letting go
Love is letting go
Let it go
Let me go

She called the song “Remind.Her”

You know those moments where you feel like you’re in a movie? This was one of those. I had just been “friend-zoned”—that is, I’d just had a woman I was supremely in love with tell me she wanted to “just be friends.” And here she was, my favorite musician who ever lived, sitting next to my bed—where I’d listened to countless hours of her recorded music like a lovestruck teenager—and she was playing a song for me that she had written about my love for her, instructing me, through her song, on how to let her go.

I had dated many muses in my life up until that time. And here I was… a muse to the greatest artist I’d ever known, musing one of the greatest songs I’d ever heard… and all because I wasn’t able to be her lover.

I was existentially astonished. I was sobbing. 

***

I spent much  of my twenties, unfortunately, studying with pickup artists (PUAs)—a story for another time. The part that’s relevant here is that the PUAs I studied with would say that I had ruined my romantic chances with her by being so emotionally vulnerable, by professing my love to her, by developing “one-itis” for her (their term for when a guy becomes obsessed with one woman, rather than viewing women as interchangeable). And by remaining friends with her after she rejected me romantically.

The PUAs’ entire existence was centered around avoiding the “friendzone”—when someone rejects you romantically and wants to be platonic friends with you. The PUA’s whole M.O. to avoid the friendzone was to play hard to get, to play it cool, to feign aloofness and disinterest, to not allow themselves to get vulnerable or even feel any feelings at all towards a woman (and certainly not to express them). And to never, ever give a woman you desire a moment of your attention if she is not interested in being sexual with you. That’s what the PUAs I had studied with in my twenties would have recommended I do with Adey.

Who knows, maybe if I had followed these PUA rules—maybe if I had played hot and cold with Adey, been more cool, enigmatic and aloof, played cat-and-mouse games—I would have had more of a romantic chance. Maybe I would have thrown her off balance enough for me to swoop in seductively.

But then, three bad things would have happened. First, the off-balance-ness I attempted to engender in her would have shown up in her creative process—and as a superfan of her music, why would I want to mess up her creative process?

Second, if somehow these games had “worked” to hook her attraction to me, then our connection would have been based on games. As soon as the games stopped (as eventually happens after the initial period of seduction) then her attraction would wither.

And related, third, had any of this happened, as soon as our romantic/sexual connection fizzled (as it likely would, being based on games), our connection would likely have ended right then. I would have missed out on what has turned out to be a decade-long friendship (going strong)—one that has been deeply nourishing and meaningful to me.

Instead, with Adey, I broke every rule of the pickup playbook. And, just as the PUAs said would happen if one broke their rules, I got friendzoned. In fact, around this time there was another guy she was falling for—the guy who is now her husband—who was much taller, bigger, and more alpha, tough, and traditionally masculine than I was. The PUAs would have ridiculed me as a loser tool, a “beta-cuck” who was giving Adey friend-attention while she was giving romantic and sexual attention to another guy.

And yet, these PUAs, following their own rules, would never have had the experience I had in that moment in my studio, one of the peak experiences of my life:

Sitting on my bed, listening to my favorite musician in the world, who had set up her electric piano next to my bed, playing a love song that she had written about our platonic friendship. A platonic love song. That I had mused.

I had to pinch myself.

This was the world’s greatest friendzone.

***

As my fortieth birthday approached in 2017, I asked Adey if she would be open to creating performance art together: I would write a story about the arc of our friendship, and she would musically illustrate the story with her songs. She said “hell yes!”

On my birthday, May 12, we performed our theatrical co-creation to an audience of about sixty friends, in the living room of my parents’ home, where I had grown up. The work was entitled The Joy of Platonic Love.

In my narrated portion of the work, I imagined myself as a dating coach of sorts, advising a young man—named “Leonard” in the story—who complained of constantly getting friend-zoned. Using the story of what I learned being “friend-zoned” and then developing a deep platonic friendship with Adey, I showed the man why being platonic friends with women could be just as rich—and often even more so—than being sexual or romantic partners. And how to approach this process without getting their egos hurt.

The story I read to the audience (slightly edited here) went as follows…

The Joy of Platonic Love

According to Jewish lore, if you make three introductions that result in marriages, you are guaranteed a spot in heaven; I am the exception. I have accumulated so many demerits in my time, I learned one night while I was particularly high, I need ten times as many to secure my place.

That is why I’m desperate to find this dude sitting in front of me a match; if I get him shacked up, I’ll be at an even twenty: two-thirds of the way towards avoiding hellfire for my protracted list of sins.

“Do you have female friends?” I asked Leonard, my new client.

“Yes, a few,” he said.

“What are your friendships with women like?”

“They’re OK.”

“Just OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Why just OK?

“I don’t know. It gets kind of… awkward with them.”

“Why is that?

“Because I’m inevitably attracted to them, and I want to sleep with them, but then I ask them on a date, and they say they don’t feel that way about me. They say that I’m just like a brother to them.”

“And, once you find out that you’re just like a brother to her, do you want to be her brother? Do you want her to be a sister to you?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m attracted to her. I want to fuck her,” Leonard said.

“No, you don’t understand my question. Once you realize that she’s not going to fuck you under any circumstances, do you still want to be friends with her? Do you want her as a sister?” I asked.

“No, I want to get the hell out of there.”

“Why?

“Because she rejected me. It feels insulting, like I’m not good enough for her. I resent that. And anyway, it would feel weird to be around her now.”

“I assume that these are really amazing women you’re talking about, otherwise you wouldn’t want to date them?”

“Yes, they’re amazing. I don’t go for non-amazing women,” Leonard said.

“So you’re saying an amazing woman, worthy of dating you, wants a close friendship with you—in fact, she wants to be your sister, and she wants you to be her brother—but you won’t develop a deep friendship with her, because she won’t sleep with you, and your ego can’t get over it?”

“No, I…”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you’re saying.”

“No, it’s just that…”

“Does it bother you that she won’t sleep with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to be attractive to women.”

“How many women do you want to be attractive to?”

“All women,” Leonard replied.

“You want to be attractive to all women?” I asked.

“Yes. Well, at least, most of them.”

 “But how many do you actually want to be sleeping with on a regular basis?”

 “I don’t know, like two or three.”

“So you want to be polyamorous, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe, a primary partner, and one or two secondary lovers?”

“That sounds perfect.”

“So, in order to live this dream polyamorous lifestyle, you need, let’s say, three women to find you attractive. And, you said, about how many women do you want to find you attractive?”

“Uh, I don’t know…”

“Nearly all of them. That’s what you said. Now there are about three and three-quarter billion females on the planet. Which means that, because you want to be attractive to three and three-quarters billion (minus three) females more than you would need to live your happy, fulfilled, sexually satisfied polyamorous life,you’re throwing away a bunch of fanastic friendships with amazing women, who could be your sisters in life, just because they won’t boink you?”

“Well… uh… I guess…”

“That’s your main problem right there.”

“What’s my main problem?”

“Why do you think I’m telling you that’s your main problem?”

“I don’t know, because, I guess… it says something about how I relate to women?”

“Yes, in fact, it does say something about how you relate to women.”

“Wha… what does it say?”

“It says you don’t respect them.”

“What? I do respect women!”

“Then why won’t you be friends with them if they don’t want to sleep with you?

“But I do want to be friends with them!”

“Dude, we have a lot of work to do on you.”

“Why?”

“Because you have your head seriously up your ass around women.”

“OK, OK, fine. But can you help me?”

“Of course I can help you. I have strong motivation to help you. Very strong.”

“Why such strong motivation?”

“Let’s just say I’m running from my past. OK, listen. Your first step is really the only step that matters. This step is extremely simple to state. In fact, I can state it in one sentence. But it’s supremely difficult to put into practice.”

“What is it?”

“It’s written on the back of this card. It’s just eight words. I call it ‘Ellsberg’s Eight Words.’ I’ve written three books. But if I had to bequeath just one sentence to humanity, this would be it. It pretty much sums up all of my teachings. Have a look.”

Leonard said, “Wow, I’m not sure I can do that.”

“I told you. It’s simple, but not easy. Very few men can do that. If you learn to do it, you’ll be among the elite, and your relations with women—in all shades, from friendships to passionate love affairs to long-term partnerships—will be abundant and smooth. But most men simply aren’t willing to practice this. So they get stuck in sexual purgatory. Or worse, sexual hell.”

“Well, how do I learn this?”

“I’ll be teaching you. But the main way I’m going to teach you at first is by telling you the story of the woman who taught me how to do this, and my relationship with her.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s a musician named Rogue.” I handed him a CD. [This was 2017, one of the last years when CDs were still a thing!]

“How did you meet her?”

[At his point in the performance, I narrated the story I told at the beginning of this chapter, of how I met Adey at Éphémère in 2013. For the fictional story in the performance, I fictionalized Adey into the character “Rogue.” After the story, the real Adey entered the stage, and played her song “Power”—the song I describe in that story.]

***

Could you feel the heartbreak in her voice?” I asked Leonard after he listened to these songs in my office.

“Yes, there’s so much depth there,” Leonard replied.

“Are you attracted to her?”

“Yeah, she’s hot. Plus an amazing singer. She’s the total package.”

“Here’s an important question, then. Would you want to be friends with Rogue, even if she wasn’t attracted to you, and even though she’s engaged and monogamous, and would never sleep with you or anyone besides her fiancé?”

“Of course. She seems amazing.”

“But you told me you didn’t want to be friends with women who weren’t attracted to you and wouldn’t sleep with you.”

“I changed my mind.”

“So quickly?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, Rogue has that effect.”

“Yes, and you have that effect too. You got me to see how blockheaded I was being.”

“Good. So, if you had the chance to be friends with her, how would you approach your friendship?”

“What do you mean?”

“What stance would you take towards your friendship? What attitude would you bring to it?”

“Respect.”

“Good. How would you handle the fact that you were attracted to her?”

“I don’t know, hide it?”

“Wrong answer.”

“Why should I not hide it, if we’re just going to be friends?”

“Hiding your attraction from a woman is always a bad idea. She can smell it, and the fact that you’re hiding it makes her feel less trust for you.”

“But I thought the whole point of this was to make a woman feel respected. Doesn’t telling her I’m attracted to her make it weird, like it always does?”

“No it doesn’t. It only made it weird for you (and me) in the past, because we were putting emotional hooks in the women we told we were attracted to.”

“Emotional hooks?”

“Yeah. We were saying, essentially, ‘I’m attracted to you, and therefore you need to be attracted to me back.’ The therefore is a hook.”

“But I never said women owe me anything back.”

“Yes you did, maybe not with words, but definitely with your actions. What about all the women you were friends with, and you bailed on them when you found out they weren’t attracted to you? You were basically holding your friendship for ransom if they didn’t reciprocate your sexual desire.”

“Well, I guess you have a point.”

“You need to be able to express your attraction for a woman, without putting any pressure or expectations on her, and while making sure she understands you value her friendship no matter what she says.”

“I’m sorry, I’m really not trying to be dense here, but doesn’t that lower her attraction for me? If I share my attraction for her, and say that I’m fine being friends with her?”

“She’s either attracted to you, or she isn’t. If she isn’t, then nothing you say at this point will change that. She already knows you’re attracted to her anyways, and bringing it out in the open, without hooks or expectations, and with the assurance that you want to remain connected no matter what, makes her feel so much more comfortable around you, and also increases her respect for you.”

“But what if she is attracted to me? Won’t telling her decrease the tension and romance?”

“First of all, if she is attracted to you, you’ll know. Women are really obvious about it, if you know what signs to look for. Second of all, if she’s attracted to you, your vulnerability about how you feel, coupled with a total non-attachment to her response, will only increase her attraction.”

“But how can I not be attached to her response? How can I honestly say that I’m OK either way? I’m attracted to her, I want to be with her.”

“Well, you said you want to be friends with her, because she’s an amazing woman, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, either you get an amazing friendship, or you get a lover.”

“But ‘lover’ is better than ‘friend.’”

“Are we back to that again? What kind of friendships do you have? Do you have close, non-sexual friendships with men?”

“Yes.”

“Do you value those friendships?”

“Yes.”

“So why can’t you see the value of similar friendships with women?”

“I guess, because my dick was getting in the way?”

“Ding dong ding,” I said. “You need to get your dick out of the way in your relating with women.”

“But then she won’t be attracted to me.”

“Dude, she’s not attracted to your dick, or whatever your dick is telling you. Not right away. If she wants or needs your dick, it’ll be there waiting for you both. That we can be sure of.”

“So what do I do then?”

“You’ve got to learn how to contain your sexual energy around women.”

“Isn’t repressing your sexual energy bad?”

“Yes, it is bad. But I didn’t say ‘repress,’ I said, ‘contain.’ There’s a difference between repressing and containing.”

“What the difference?”

“Repressing means pretending your sexual desire is not there, pushing it down, refusing to feel it. Containing means feeling it, being aware it’s there, but not getting it messy all over someone else.”

“Getting it messy?”

“Yes. Imagine you have a bunch of paints. Let’s say, body paints. Have you ever seen a body painter?”

“Yes, at parties, they’re fun.”

“OK, good. So, imagine you’re a body painter, and you know you can paint the most exquisite painting on a woman’s body. Do you just walk up to her and start doing that?”

“Of course not.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“You ask her if she’d like to be painted. Or wait for her to ask you,” Leonard replied.

“Ding ding ding! We have a winner!”

“What do you do with your paints before you’ve asked her, or she’s asked you?”

“I keep them to myself.”

“Excellent. Now, can you enjoy knowing how good you are with the paints?”

“Yes.”

“Can you enjoy imagining how good it would be, for you and for her, to paint a beautiful landscape on the canvas of her body?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell her your vision, respectfully and without getting your paint all over her, for what you’d like to paint on her?”

“Yes.”

“But will you force your paints on her, or try to control or manipulate her into getting your paint all over her?” I asked

“No.”

“That, my friend, will make you a very good painter. And, I might add, in high demand.”

The Divine Absurdity of Love

In the performance, we played a short video of a conversation we randomly recorded on a hike one day in 2016. In this conversation, I told Adey (slightly edited):

Imagine that some greater being came to me—some more powerful, distant being. God, an alien, some mad scientist revealing that I was living in the Matrix. Something where all of a sudden I see that there’s this whole other reality, and I’ve just been a little bubble inside some larger bubble. Imagine that.

Now, imagine this person or being or entity or robot or whatever comes along, and they tell me, “It’s all been an illusion. That musician Adey that you love, she’s just these computer blips. And your mom is just this program that we designed. And Jena, your ex-wife, is a figment of the Matrix. It’s all just blips. None of its real. And now we’re going to bring you to reality. You’re going to see the greater reality and come with us.”

I’d say, “Well, is Adey there? And Jena and my mom and Catalina and all the people that I love, are they all going to be up there?”

And the being would say, “No, you don’t get it. These people are just computer blips. We’ve been creating this virtual reality for you.”

And I’d say, “Well, keep me plugged in!”

And they’d say, “But why? It’s not real. It’s fake. Don’t you want what’s real?”

And I’d say, “No, this is not fake. This love is the only thing I would live for. And if it doesn’t exist where you’re taking me—if it’s just the love programmed into our genes, or into our AI software, or whatever—then [I want the beauty you’ve created for me here]. You may have other things that could more grand [in the greater realm]. But they won’t be this.”

That’s the divine absurdity of love. There’s an absurdity that we know—on some level—all of our emotions [have an ulterior motive]. Science can point to evolutionary reasons for pair bonding and these kinds of emotional responses, and they can pinpoint the neurons and the chemicals and all of that [and explain why we have these emotions, for evolutionary reasons.]

And yet within that, I’m still like, “That’s what I want.” So there’s a surrender—in fact, there’s a submission to it.

If that alien came or that robot AI came, and they said, “You are our bitch. We’re creating the whole reality for you. And you’re just this little blob that’s being fed this reality that we’ve created for you”…

I’d reply, “Thank you for making me your bitch. Because it’s so good. Thank you.”

That is the type of submission to the divine that I roll with.

After I told her this, Adey gave me a huge friend hug. “I love you!” she squealed. Then she said, “You light my fire around this record.” [At that time she was recording Silver Wheel.] “When I think about the record that’s coming through, a lot of what I think about is how you’re going to feel when you listen to it. Dude, you’re going to melt like fucking butter. You’re going to be like the first time you saw me. On your knees. On your knees.”