On Love: Definitions, Diverse Depths & Intimate Reflections

Conversations & InterviewsReflectiveLove
Written By Sloane Angelou

Love is a concept that fascinates me, it is as real as day yet as abstract as night. We reached out to several people to tell us what love is to them, to describe love in their own way and they were kind enough to indulge us. Here we have compiled the responses we got from nine different people. This is the beginning of a series of conversations on love. We have every intention to keep unveiling as much of its layers as possible, in as many ways as the subject will permit. 

We are very grateful to everyone who participated in this offering, each one of you has been a light to me, your words have led us to hold our chest, they have brought tears to our eyes, made us sit in silence to reflect, made us feel familiar things and overall made us really think. Your words have been love(ly), so i thank each one of you from the center of my being.

“Love is, after all, what fights for us so that we can hold our peace.” - Vagabonds! (Eloghosa Osunde)

 
 

Ayanda’s words makes me think of home, family, longing and the blessing of kinship within reach🥺, here’s what she had to say on love:

Love is my mum calling me everyday, love is the deep feeling of sadness i have at the thought of existing in a world without her. The deep feeling of sadness that overcame me when my dad and uncle left this earth. It is the deep joy i feel when i read a poem which brings me to tears or a book that feels like winter with lots of snow. Love is creating playlists for myself, of music that feels like it is being dedicated to me. Love is what i feel from my mothers sisters, my cousin brother, my sister and my bestfriends, the deep sense of gratitude i have for their presence, love is hoping and praying they always remain in my life. Love is for me, family, laughter, empathie, solidarity, bravery and kindness. Love is feeling seen and seeing others.

 

Ayanda Bokang Ncube, born and raised in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, now lives and works as a nurse in a Hospice in Germany. She spends her free time reading and trying to write Poetry. She loves Music, her family and believes in human rights more than anything ❤️

 

Guérin’s poetry made me think of depth, yearning and a sense of hunger that comes with stepping into the unknown or being touched by it, in this case — love.  Here’s their description of love in a poem:

 

THE MAW

A day of love enters a camera’s eye and falls into a canyon.

A night in love descends the canyon and wakes up in an ocean.

You enter into another and cannot see the room, the wound, the floor.

Whether there are old footprints, a gathering of long-dead leaves.

If there are stones, they are unanswerable but always speaking.

Always. Incomprehensible as feathers, or the resting place of smoke.

A person is not a lover. The Lover is the maw that swallows

all involved and leaves nothing but hunger.

 

Guérin Asante is a poet, essayist, photographer, visual artist, and musician based ​in Atlanta.

 

Chino paints a picture, drawing a line for us by connecting love to breathing, and as the picture she paints becomes clearer, we witness it in awe. Her words remind me of how critical love is to our existence, how much more expansive it can get, and how much i want to be rooted in love in the way she describes it. Here’s what she has to say on love:

 

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about love is, “love is an action”. Love is an action in the way that breathing is an action. It (breathing) is something we do, without paying attention and while paying attention. It is also a choice because we can choose to stop breathing, but, as much as we try to hold our breath (on our own), we lose that battle.

Breathing is essential to life. To have breath is to have life. And that is how love truly is. Essential, needed, necessary. We are not made to do without it. We cannot do without it. A world and a life without love is dead, a dead thing.

Now, the quality of love can be subjective and varies. So, is the quality of one’s breathing. We can choose to be intentional and practice deep (diaphragmatic) breathing—the type of breathing that helps regulate our nervous system, that helps us stay calm, that is healing. It is the same with love. We can choose love, choose to love, and be loving in a way that is healing and brings healing to us. We can choose a love that regulates us, that recalibrates us, that brings us back to that homeostatic place of being. A love that connects us to our being, our essence, and the being and essence of others (and the ones we love).

In Igbo, as a way to say I love you, we say, ahurumgi n’anya, which loosely translates to, I see you, in the eye, with my eyes. To see is an action and also a choice. And what does it mean to see and be seen clearly. What does it mean to use our eyes, the windows to our soul, to truly see a person (or to truly see ourselves) and see them in their own eyes, the windows to their own soul, to see their soul, their essence. To go within, beyond the noise, beyond everything else, and truly behold the essence of you or the person you love. To be able to see and behold, to connect in a way that there is no you, no me, no other, there is just one, just the Divine.

What does a love like that do? A love where you are truly seen. A love where you do not have to hide, where you cannot hide your essence, where you exist as freely as possible, with not an iota of fear, shame, or guilt. A love that is freeing, liberating. To love and be loved like that, whew, it is invigorating, it is life-giving, it is life. And what is life if not having breath, if not breathing.

A love that truly sees you, sees your essence, no doubt also sees your beautiful imperfections and accepts them. It sees you and encourages you to do the work needed to be in alignment with your divine or true essence. It recognizes your humanity and your capacity for change and growth, and your power to bring about these necessary changes. This love holds you in all the ways you truly need to be held. It makes room for you, it believes in you, it dreams with and for you, it nurtures you, it keeps you accountable, it empowers you. A love like this also requires of us, asks us, challenges us to be the soft landing, the tenderness needed necessary for us as we human, as we breathe, as we live.

So, yes, I would describe love as a necessary action as breathing is, vital to life and living.

 

Chino Nnenna is a queer Igbo nwaanyi, born and raised in Nigeria, currently based in the US. They are a healer and Dibia in-training, and an initiate in Ifa Isese L’Agba tradition. An active participant in life and living, she derives joy in reading, watching “good” movies and shows, dancing, seeing her plant babies grow and thrive, being near and watching the waves of the ocean, preparing and eating a good meal, and spending quality time with her blood and chosen family.

 

Oreoluwa’s offerings on love, in a poem and voice memo, makes me think of resilience, of new beginnings, and of healing. Here’s what they have to say:

 

building myself into a soft lilly by oreoluwa akinyode:

i am a rock

when heated i burn

slipping molt(lava)

burning

glowing

i was a solid rock surrounded by rocks on the shore

grief came close and close

then washed over me

slammed into me

broke me into a thousand pieces

brought me into the waters

forced me to reckon with myself

what i avoided

returned me to the shore in a thousand pieces

this time with more wisdom and softness

reminding me that i can build myself back together with a gentle touch. maybe i’ll build myself into a soft lilly.

 
 

Photo Credit: Aayesha Ayub

Oreoluwa "Ifamodupe Sangosemilore" Akinyode, The Living Breathing archive of what was, what is, and what will be. Through the use of images, moving images, and text, Oreoluwa crafts worlds where their multitudes have a place to exist. Oreoluwa weaves storytelling and sharing into the archive. To be the holder of you and your loved ones' archives is to care for your existence beyond life and death. The goal of their work is to invite each viewer to reflect on their own self-perception and how they move through the world. Their work exists as a living prayer, a portal that acts as a catalyst for change. As a priest of African spirituality, specifically of the Ifa and Orisa Isese practice, Oreoluwa is in constant conversation and reflection with their ancestors and spirit guides. With their practice, they work to un-demonize indigenous African spiritual traditions and remind the world that our practices are sacred and are a guide to remembering one's self and destiny. Oreoluwa is a recent Gotham EDU Film And Media Career Development filmmaker fellow and a 2023 Queer|Art Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant Finalist.

 

Oyinkan gives us an Apple and Spotify Playlist, Love in 21 Songs. They’ve included a list of the songs, with notes explaining why each song was chosen and what it means to them in terms of love. In a few paragraphs in the end, they tell us how all the songs tie together in love’s name. Listening and reading Yin’s contribution had me all up in my feelings! Here’s what they have to say:

 

SONG LIST (Bottom to Top) with Yin’s Notes:

 

Yin On How The Songs Tie Together

It starts off with the Cloud Atlas End Title, because love is constantly regenerated. It is always the end. Eye Adaba, comes next because love is also always the beginning and a powerful prayer. Slow and Steady, is a study into how fast love can feel even when it’s a slow smolder. Ours, is a sure sign that love can feel tangible, a heavy feel in our hands.

Wizkid shows us in Frames that love is teasing. Rendzvous is a great example of love in film, a favorite story playing out. Mystery of love is the arrival of spring, the prayer of love in Eye Adaba being answered, this song captures a flower blooming for the first time - God working - and it is good.

Luther Vandross instructs us that good communication is such an important part of love in Buy Me A Rose. Love is always a brave declaration whether it’s whispered or I Have Nothing by Whitney Houston.

Love is grief and Lagbaja’s Never Far Away is an excerise in memory, a fine reminder that you can love so strongly something or someone you left.

Love is the sweetest thing and what’s more beautiful than knowing everyone else has felt this before - Cue in All of Me. There’s something scary about how constant love is even as it changes and I think Davina Oriakhi feels the same in It’s All About Love. I Listen to You to you is love lending a kind ear.

Love can often feel all over the place, making us wonder if we are at the right place or right time - for a friendship, relationship, retrying with a parent… i often spend a lot of time Overthinking IT.

Some days, love is just Sweet and other days, it’s power nostalgia, a feeling I strongly associate with Queen and their song, Radio.

There are times when love doesn’t align but it’s still powerful in its yearning. Wuse II shows what it’s like reaching for a hand that won’t hold yours.

Is there anything as thoroughly destructive as love? Of Monsters and Men’s Destroyer explores the tentative surrender to love’s power to utterly destroy us and then suddenly love becomes a sudden primitive, god defying thing… Hozier paints an idea of love being so world bending, story changing, that even From Eden, beyond curses and Gods, we would always make it to each other. Love and its magnetism.

Love is well rooted and even as it changes, Everything Stays. A garden with new fruit but still the same garden.

Love is Timeless… a regeneration that is promised. Love is the beginning and the end.

 

Yin is a storyteller whose mediums are becoming familiar to them once again. They spend a lot of time listening to music, dreaming up new worlds and gaming. They live in service to love and community and in a wonderful disbelief, they have faced reinvention. They can’t wait for you to meet the new them.

 

irokos words took me to the edge of a river, and left me with only one choice — to drink. here’s how dey responded to my question — how would you describe love?

 

in all honesty, upon receiving this question initially, i froze.

“what is love, how would you describe love?”

it’s a big question.

if not, to me, the question.

how am i to define love, in all it’s entirety, how can i possibly say what love means to me when love means everything to me, how can i describe everything?

how can i possibly describe what love means to me when i am love, and yet i still cannot map out all the depths of my own spirit, my own destiny?

how can i define, to some, the undefinable, the big what if, the highest thing we know of our reality, how can i define something so real as love?

i can’t.

to define, feels too… colonialist. too wrong, too off-centre for me to do.

to define, for me, is to limit. to map out a things borders and attempt to package and simplify it neatly to be consumed. easy digested. marketable even. and i cannot.

love isn’t a thing that can be put to any limit - love is limitless, it exceeds limits, it is the limit. and love transcends borders - physical barriers. it moves across time and generations, across nations any dimension. and love cannot be sold, or bought, or condensed into any lifeless scheme, for love is antithetical to profit, and to personal gain, and to easiness. love is mutualistic. it is shared, it is communal. it is huge and complex, it is everything and everyone. love is what love is, and love isn’t what it isn’t - but love is love, just love and nothing else, so to define it feels, to me, like a violence or an injustice, a disservice. it just isn’t right.

but i guess you see what i did there, in telling you what love isn’t, i’ve said in some aspects, in fact, what love is.

and this is not definition, this is something different. this is observation.

to claim to know love in it’s entirety is ironic and almost arrogant, since love is bigger than us in every sense. it is impossible for any living spirit, except for love itself, to know all of love. in fact, the only way we can know love is through death, and our eventual return to love (but more on that later).

so if we cannot define love as a whole, what we can do is describe love from our observations. what we can do is describe love from our center(s), and describe how love reveals itself to you (me), in every way, in any way.

and once i started to think about it like that, then a lot of things began to flow. here’s how i see love, and how i operate as love, within love.

these were some notes.

—————————

let’s start with my birthright.

i am (a) vibrant revolution.

vibrancy is the marriage of love and beauty. love being the radical, visceral, intangible, transformative, inextinguishable, reciprocal and expansive return to oneself. and beauty being the state of a thing when it’s its most wild and free self - when a thing is its most honest.

revolution is two things — motion and politic. the politics of revolution are fueled by rebellion, reclamation, recentering, which all mirror and stem from a spirit return. which manifests physical as the motion ịlaghachị (to return).

therefore, a vibrant revolution is a radical, visceral, intangible, transformative, inextinguishable, reciprocal and expansive return to a state of beauty - where one is its most wild and free self - when one is its most honest.

*

starting with love, i see love as

Radical as in the extremes. looking at the roots. Visceral as in the deep. looking within the internal. Intangible as in the unsensed. looking in other centres. Transformative as in the unfolding. looking at change. Inextinguishable as in the remains. looking at the eternal truths. Expansive as in the space. looking at what has grown. Reciprocal as in mutuality. looking at what comes back.

i see love as about returning to oneself.

*

energy cannot be created nor destroyed. (only transmuted; changed).

would this not mean that ‘different’ energies must be made of the Same Energy - Initial Energy - just transmuted into different forms?

for now, let’s call this initial energy ‘ose’ or for anyone that has watched or read His Dark Materials, replace the word with Dust too.

understand that this initial energy can still neither be created nor destroyed. ose cannot exist as a separate creation from its creator. therefore, it being the initial energy, its creation and creator and creating cannot be separate. it must all happen at once, all at the same time.

the creators will creates as an emanation of its ‘itness’. as a property, not an act.

the emanating sustains the emanator; as dispersion and return happens. this is love.

love as the source. love dispersing and love experiencing itself. love returning.

*

love’s one desire is to know itself. love’s nature is emanation and sustainability. dispersion and ịlaghachị (to return). so it goes out as an emanation and returns. it seeks and it finds and does not keep but gives again. return. revolution. as a process. love is a process. god is a process, not a person. creation. love. as a property, not an act.

*

as ose travels, it is transmuted. it becomes denser (heavier and lower) as the wave moves further from the source, God, Osebuluwa - as it moves further through different planes.

that is why love (ose) is felt as intangible on this plane. because our matter is a lower and heavier (denser) form, which vibrates at a different frequency to the purest form of love(ose).

however, when we begin to recognise love (ose), as is our collective, most deepest purpose, as love (ose) is our life, we can begin to sense ose more vividly.

*

chi na eke

love and beauty.

creator and creation.

a process, not an action.

—————————

i know this is all not very cohesive, but i think that’s important. this is just how i see love through my centre. love may look very different from yours. like i said, love is not about easiness. although it is celestial simply, other-wisely complex. and that’s the beauty of it.

this is all what love means to me.

 

iroko solaris kabelo ( dey/dem ) is a black queer artist and alụsị of nigerian and jamaican descent, born and raised in the uk. dey have co-directed and edited der own short film ‘MIDNIGHT FEAST’ (2023), dey write poetry and spiritual works on der personal blog and also have started producing and writing der own music. as an artist, iroko is interested in the constant communion and restoration of black queer ecologies.

 

Chii’s essay grounded me. It brought us into a moment of renewal of our commitment to being a lover, it brought invaluable remembrance to us. Here’s what she has to say:

 

The Lover as Worker in the Temple of Life

In contemplating what love means, I have often thought in terms of the receiver, casting myself in the role of the beloved: how it feels to be loved, what I want from love, what I will not accept under any circumstances. But I am finding it more meaningful, these days, to contemplate love as the giver. I cast myself not as the beloved (a safe and benign position) but as the lover. I am the one who loves. Lover. The giver of love, the doer of love, the maker of love.

As lover, it falls to me, therefore, to love (verb). There is no love without love-ing. The lover must prepare themself. They must cultivate themself. In what ways am I cultivating myself?

Having cast myself as lover, who and what are my beloved? How am I loving them? What am I prepared to do for them? What would I endure or forgo? What battles would I wage? What fortresses would I erect? How am I organizing myself?

We don’t just say that we love; it must be backed by deeds renewed and repeated like the life-giving act of inhalation and exhalation. What we love must actually be loved (verb). There are many things I say I love: the divine, the natural, the land, the waters, the stories that make us, justice, dignity, heritage, self, one another. Loving calls me to love these things and to love them intentionally.

The lover must be disciplined for loving is sacred work, loving is necessary work. We live in a bruised and battered world filled with violence, suffering, and pain. A lover is a worker in the temple of Life, blowing hope into this world, scattering the smoke of darkness that asks us to just give up and give in. Love is always hopeful. It acknowledges the state of things but keeps faith in the possibility of betterment for the beloved.

As lover, I am inevitably a giver, but love does not call us to abandon the self. Love honours the self yet transcends it. It calls us to recognise our roles in the creation of the world and take up service in the temple of Life.

 

Chii Ọganihu is a Nigerian writer and thinker. Ọganihu's work has been published in Portland Review and elsewhere. She can be found @ChiiOganihu on Twitter and Instagram.

 

Tobi’s words took me to church, then to a mosque, then into my grandfathers shrine. Everything we experienced while reading his words felt both philosophical and spiritual at the same time, two sides of the same four-headed coin. Here’s what he had to say:

 

Contemplations on Love

I carried this piece to full term.

When Oma first contacted me about writing a piece, a seed was planted.

Without my knowing, some goblin at the back of my mind was set to work. He was a silent worker, that one. I only got glimpses of his tireless forging in moments of silence.

Love. That heavy word tends to hang in the air when you say it. It descends on you with such grim seriousness that you have to run out of your room and stand in the sun to shake the dread out of your system.

The format of my meditation is what bothered me most. How does one go about tackling this? It is the kind of topic where one can write a novella without saying anything at all.

After sustained thinking about this problem, I decided to write it merely as a letter to a newly acquired friend, and that is Oma:

 

Dear Oma,

I have thought and thought about what love means to me, but so far, I am unable to come up with something that does not sound too self-important.

I want you to see this as an exercise in discovery. In the little time I have spent on this earth, I have seen love go by a million names. I have seen it used in a million other contexts.

This short piece will be my attempt to make sense of this mystery, though I am sure at the end of the day I am just a man shaking his fist at the wind.

To put it simply, I see love as the fabric of the universe. In my understanding, it is a force that permeates the past, present and future; a binding agent some might call the hand of destiny.

It is a system of paying attention. Love is the thing that draws you to an object or person for no reason other than to teach you a lesson.

In that light, I see love personified in the trickster gods known as Ekwensu in Igbo tradition or Esu in Yoruba mythology.

This god is often seen as a cunning figure, a trickster. He loves to pull pranks, bend rules, and cause mayhem.

He is unpredictable. Whenever the world seems out of balance, he is the one that is called to restore the energies to their natural state.

They say he is associated with healing in some traditions, and in others he is a child protector.

Like Esu or Ekwensu, love is one thing today, and another thing tomorrow. When you try to put a pin on it, it appears in another form.

I think this contributes to the endless fascination we have with love. It is an inexhaustible well.

Artists have worn themselves to the bone trying to give expression to this elusive emotion.

I see it in so many places that it is hard to put a bracket on it. Love is a many-faced god with just as many names.

A full report on love is basically impossible, so I will content myself with painting a picture. To get a clue about the wholeness of something, one must look at the parts that make it up.

Let’s look at it in one of its positive lights; the romantic context.

Every budding couple in love will eventually hit a plateau. When the fuels of passion can no longer sustain the fiery burn, love steps in to hold the reigns.

I am not the type of person to make a clear distinction between love and lust, for they are both points on a many-dotted map. Love is exactly what it is because it changes form. It is attentive to the demands of the moment.

To me, it is the creation of space in your soul for something other than yourself. A realisation that who you think you are, that is, your ego, is not who you really are.

With this, I allude to the spiritual idea that everything in the universe is connected.

Even that, when I look back at it, is a clumsy definition of love. The thing is, one cannot really define love, but you know it when you see it.

People give attention to things they love. They can’t help but do otherwise.

You see it in the couple that starts to look alike after months of being together. They smile the same. They laugh the same. They start to talk like each other.

When love exists in the space between two people, they can’t help but be changed by it. When love reigns, the separation you feel from the object of your affection melts away.

You meet in the middle. You become one.

Love is the chemical reaction that transforms the essence of their character. No one is ever the same after an encounter with love, even if it leaves them with a bitter taste in their mouth.

Every relationship we treasure, every relationship we love, is fed with constant vigilance. Love is exactly such.

It is constant vigilance because the battle is fought each day. A person must not, should not, stop expressing their love for their partner just because they have expressed it countless times in the past.

Just as the sun rises each morning to remind us that darkness is impermanent, love must rise in the same way.

That is the love we like to acknowledge. The only love we think is real. However, whether we like it or not, love exists in many forms.

In its negative, love manifests as hate.

There is this saying that if a man loves god, he can become holy in twenty years, but if he hates God, he can do that same work in two years. 

I am hard-pressed to think of a love-expression more powerful or just as obsessive as hatred.

Hatred fills the mind completely. Just like love, it extinguishes the self so that only the object of hate, the other, exists.

Whether I want to believe it or not, sometimes love is violence. Violence because we twist another person’s image to fit our narrative. In that sense, we have brutalised their personhood. In our minds, we have made them something they are not.

That is love in the negative.

With that, I conclude my snapshot of the eternal mystery of love. I did my best to create a portrait of what it means to me, which is why I am sure it will change.

In two years time, what I write about this subject might be completely different.

For now, I am content with what I have managed to pour out. A lot has been made clear to me in the process of writing this, and for that, I am grateful.

I am also grateful to you, Oma, for bringing this prompt to me. I wish you well in your endeavour.

 

Oluwatobi Amida is a writer, physical therapist and photographer with an interest in artistic expression and mythical ideas. He is a self-described mystic with a taste for the spiritual and a hunger for the divine. As a student of the universe, he is committed to learning all he can while he exists on this earthly plane.

 

Ras has simply challenged and inspired me to look into the mirror of high standard and reclaim a necessary position. Here’s what they have to say:

 

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”

 —— Kurt Vonnegut

 

Amongst the many things I love about my partner, is that they send me a text everyday at 11:11. They did it when we started talking, and it has become our little ritual. Everyday at 11:11, I reach for my phone and see the numbers and the three stars next to them. Sometimes the text has something like a prayer, or things hoped for. And everyday, at 11:11, I send them the same message, sometimes with stars, and sometimes with hearts. It is not a perfect exercise. Sometimes we forget, sometimes we are caught up by the vicissitudes of life. But when we remember, we reach for our phones, and for each other across time and space. When I asked them why they do it, they told me it was their way of declaring their affirmations, a way to speak their desires, to make them real.

And then, as a joke, I told them that I would send a message every time the numbers on the clock were symmetrical. Everyday they receive a message at 11:11, 12:12, or even 23:23. This, now, has become our ritual. I think it’s a meaningful way to move through time marking moments of desire, of longing, of remembrance, of hope. Affirming our love. All day long. There is no why.

This is how I describe love. To be remembered amongst things hoped for. To be remembered. To be hoped for. To be.

 

Ras Mengesha is a writer, zinemaker, and teacher based in Nairobi and Kilifi, Kenya.

 
Sloane Angelou

Sloane Angelou is a multifaceted strategist, storyteller, and writer with a deep passion for exploring the nuances of human existence through the lens of human experiences.

Previous

Seven Books On Spirit Theory
Next

An Alternative Way to do ltu Oba Anwu Sunbath Ritual in Odinani