If We Only Had Love

There is a great Jacques Brel song titled “Quand On a Que L’amour,” that my mother played for me at age 4, and which I still listen to with awe and wonder. The translated English version, is titled “If We Only Had Love,” but the literal French translation is more like: “When One Has (nothing) But Love.”

It was the music I chose for the first dance at my wedding and also at my mother’s funeral.

You can hear Brel perform it live here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZHg6AUXTKw

The song, like the great prayers and hymns, contains all knowledge in one space. My mother gave it to me at such a young age, in fact gave me the whole incredible album “If You Go Away,” which I learned by heart, and finally learned French in order to understand better. It was played, in 1969, from a sunken record player inside a wood-burnished unit the size of a sofa, with speakers on either end. I used to just lay there and listen to it. “Who is Marieke?” I would ask my mother, indignant that there could be some woman who would reject the beautiful and perfect Jacques Brel between the towers of Bruges and Gand.

Quand On A Que L’amour departs from romantic love and speaks of the love that is understood by the dying, at the moment of death, the “grand voyage,” (great journey.)

My pigeon translation follows:

Quand on n’a que l’amour
A s’offrir en partage
Au jour du grand voyage
Qu’est notre grand amour

(When we only have love,
To offer in sharing,
On the day of the great journey
That is our great love)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Mon amour toi et moi
Pour qu’?clatent de joie
Chaque heure et chaque jour

(When we only have love,
My love you and me
To burst into joy
Every hour and every day)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Pour vivre nos promesses
Sans nulle autre richesse
Que d’y croire toujours

(When we only have love,
To live our promises
Without any other wealth
Other than to believe it always)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Pour meubler de merveilles
Et couvrir de soleil
La laideur des faubourgs

(When we only have love
To furnish with marvels
And cover with sun
The ugliness of the suburbs)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Pour unique raison
Pour unique chanson
Et unique secours

(When we only have love
As the only reason
the only song
the only solace)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Pour habiller matin
Pauvres et malandrins
De manteaux de velours

(When we only have love
To dress in the morning
The poors and the bandits
With coats of velvet)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
A offrir en pri?re
Pour les mots de la terre
En simple troubadour

(When we only have love
To offer in prayer
For the sickness of the world
As a simple troubadour)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
A offrir ? ceux-l?
Dont l’unique combat
Est de chercher le jour

(When we only have love
To offer to those
Whose solitary fight
Is to look for the day)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Pour tracer un chemin
Et forcer le destin
? chaque carrefour

(When we only have love
To trace a path
And forge a destiny
At every crossroad)

Quand on n’a que l’amour
Pour parler aux canons
Et rien qu’une chanson
Pour convaincre un tambour

(When we only have love
To speak to cannons
And only a song
To convice a drummer)

Alors sans avoir rien
Que la force d’aimer
Nous aurons dans nos mains
Amis le monde entier.

(Then without having a thing
Besides the strength to love
We’ll have in our hands
Friends, the entire world)

***

I return to it, over the years, time and again, and it heals me.

I forget its irrefutable message, only to be brought back to it, kicking and screaming.

Brel had a short life, and a series of clear messages.

Tonight I am thinking of Christine Maggiore, whose memorial page I signed last night: www.ChristineMaggioreMemorial.com.

I spoke to her husband Robin, tonight, and I said: “Robin, what does it feel like?”

To my amazement, he described the same thing I have been feeling: “It feels like we are so safe, and protected, and guided. It feels like she is right here with me, raising Charlie. Other times…it feels like the deepest darkest despair of my life.”

Instead of feeling hounded and frightened, prepared for yet another round of attack and debasement about who we are as human beings, we feel safe. Something has shifted.

It is as if she stepped out of this world and dropped a cloak down on us that we could wrap ourselves in, and as long as we kept it close, nothing would ever hurt us again.

The answer was not one of science, of minutae, of infinite squabbles and calculations about how to keep a heart beating longer, but rather, of how to have a heart in the first place, that would be remembered for what it tried to impart.

The entire time I have been embroiled in the HIV/AIDS wars, (since 1987) I have believed that the answer would set us free, and that the answer was medical and scientific, and would be yielded by way of open, exhaustive debate. I never felt safe, I always felt I was walking on a razor’s edge that could push me into oblivion and annihilation, if I didn’t answer, fight back, address, explain, prove.

But the only thing worth proving is that in the time of your life, you gave as much love as you had to give, helped as many people as you were capable of helping. In the absence of answers, of a guidebook that could tell is exactly what the recipe for longer life was, we had the real answer all along. The only thing we have any control over is how we conduct ourselves toward our fellow human beings, how hard we try, to comfort the frightened and extend a hand, and try to understand and give solace to another human being.

I did not understand this.

Dean didn’t ether.

We both thought that we were vulnerable to the desecrations and abuses that hailed down as we tried to unravel the HIV/AIDS mystery, and tried to explain why this unraveling was just and good and important.

We believed we might be set free by some imaginary jury that would deliver a verdict.

But what kind of victory is that?

I look at Christine, and I see true triumph. In the face of wild, howling hate, she kept her dignity and bearings. The best gift she ever gave was to not take onboard the message of fear, helplessness, and self debasement that her enemies fought so hard to imbue her with.

It is when we start to battle with these messages that we become what we fear most. We become weak, angry, combative, self-pitying. I became all of that and more, over the years.

But now I have finally understood that there is no magic answer in the sky to what we are worth, whether we are “right,” whether we deserve to be here or should jump off a cliff. While the answers work themselves out over our heads, our job is to stay down here and hold on to one another, real tight, and never let go, and never back off, and never betray the one thing we know for sure, which is that we have to remain fully human and act with love and compassion, always.

I remember when Dean entered the fray, and when the first missiles hit him, and how he screamed, and how I screamed back, and how Harvey screamed at both of us and we all slammed down the phone and swore never to return to this Godforsaken fight.

It was not Godforsaken. God did not forsake us. We did it to ouselves, from the experiences we had in childhood, of being frightened and abused and belittled.

If you walk tall, and breathe deep, and do your best, you are always protected, no matter the outcome. When you die, people will mourn your passing, speak your name, and return all the love you ever gave, like all these people here: (www.ChristineMaggioreMemorial.com) who understood exactly who Christine Maggiore was, and who are resplendent in the very tattered cloaks that once signaled “DENIALIST.”

Hate has nothing left to eat. Gratitude, awakening, have only just begun.

It took me 22 years to learn this simple lesson, that nobody can ever take anything away from your sense of your own worth, unless you let them, and if you let them, it’s because you didn’t get it, that nothing comes from them, everything comes from you, and those you love, and between you you get to build a palace and live in it, and nothing can ever touch it.

And when we understand this, we will have in our hands, (friends) le monde entier–the entire world.