Pur ti miro 

I refer to this painting with the words Pur ti miro ( l' incoronazione  di Poppaea - Monteverdi)  but the actual title is
"In a thousand years no one you care about will matter"

It's about the fact that something so ethereal as love doesn't exist beyond the lives of those who loved each other if there is no record of it: a picture, a letter, a Facebook post? a videotape ... Anything really that can survive for a substantial amount of time  but not just the memories that keep on living in all their friends, nor their children, and all the generations beyond because grandchildren can hardly testify to the love between grandparents. It all gets fuzzy, boring and not exciting at all beyond a few generations.

 A thousand years is a bit romantic, but I like the sound of it. 200 years is definitely enough. That makes it - the fact that we, our loved ones and Love will disappear into oblivion- even more sad. So soon, isn't it.  Or maybe it could be a relief, knowing that in the end it really doesn't matter that much. Live on, party and enjoy love unashamedly. 

A testimony of love just says that love was here, just like Kilroy. How many times have we seen pictures of our grandparents or their parents even and not known who those people were and how they related to each other. We may see people holding hands, kissing, smiling, talking, but we may never know who they were and why they loved each other. 

So what about secret love, forbidden love, hidden love? Anyone can carry enormous amounts of love into the grave and to the world it will seem as if you never loved at all. 

I found a letter once in a book. My late grandfather wrote it. I didn't find him very likable or capable of romantic love, but as I said as a grandchild I can hardly testify to that. The letter was meant for a woman, unknown  to me, there was no name, one page might have missed. I could definitely place the people he wrote about in the letter except for a few instances where he reminisced about things they had done together, a walk, quite a few walks and long conversations. I don't know who she is and never will, but he really did love her. For some reason he didn't send the letter and left it in this book about 1920s Russian economics. Probably thought no one would ever open that book. Had I thrown away all those boxes filled with books without opening them no one would have ever known. Total Oblivion has been postponed for a few more years. 

You could read this painting as a woman reminiscing about love, but not a real love, more like the idea of love. Making the object of love so much bigger. While the bikini girl is the incorporation of a real life sensual love. Loud, colorful, noisy, unashamed, putting the object of love on a lower scale. In the end none will survive, not the idea, not the feeling.