The room where it didn't happen
In the song Forever by the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson sings:
If every word I said / Could make you laugh / I'd talk forever
And it goes without saying that I wouldn’t shut up either but —
Jokes without punchlines, the same stories over and over again, monologues about the bad day at work and family drama. Devotion feels more like listening. In the play Tennis in Nablus, the oud only exists as an object of devotion: first as an instrument that Yousef plays for his wife every evening; and then, when he's taken to prison, as an item sold for a gun in an attempt to restore justice and bring him back.
I was a muse for books and albums that never happened, a muse for everything from before my time that had to come to a screeching halt. I was led here, into this house. All I did was make myself comfortable. And I must admit that I didn’t hesitate to take off my jacket and make myself comfortable. In the appearance of a fan came the disappearance of art.
A few summers ago, a girl told me about the time she loved a boy so much she gave him one of her kidneys. He hurt her deeply and yet she now wore a ring from someone who knew how to love her just right.
The mixed signals from other girls made for an interesting puzzle to solve, still called loyalty because nobody was ever called to bed. I folded laundry and scrubbed wax off the floor and that made me a puzzle that didn’t need solving.
When Jesse Eisenberg won Best Screenplay for A Real Pain, he said in his thank-you speech that Emma Stone was the most famous person he knew and yet the most dedicated to encouraging him as a writer. For over a decade, she would write him about the lines that amused her from his magazine pieces.
That sounded like a kind of devotion that was not erotic or earth-shattering or devastating, a love you by way of example that was fully clothed and knew how to show up every day.
I don’t know if the person who has known me the longest knows anything new about me. And the last person who wanted to get to know me read my words before hearing my voice. And neither of them know that I would have given up a kidney too if it was ever a question.
It is not easy to be seen losing faith in your devotion. Perhaps that is why nobody writes home about comraderie with an old muse. And why lock the door when it became clear that the house was a cavern? Eggs and playlists made for plenty of good company.
Devotion had a house all to itself but it only ever needed a room. And it takes a long time to learn that there is such a thing as too much room.