Popular culture makes a strong distinction between love and lust. Often, going further. Declaring that love should be devoid lust, and lust may not contain love.
Wife material can’t be sexually adventurous. You can’t cuddle a one night stand. Lust for your thirst, love to lubricate your motion. Water and oil.
Popular culture demands permanence. A boyfriend turns to a fiancé, who turns to a husband in a feeling of happily ever after. Of crushes that turn into exes who are cut off forever after.
Personally, my emotions are conflicted. Love and lust conflate. Relationships are perpetually in flux. Girlfriends turn into exes who remain crushes forever after.
Art, with its capacity to colour outside the lines, with its knack for breaking the rules, serving as a home for rebels, outcasts and weirdos… Could have a voice to resonate.
Jhene Aiko speaks to me. She speaks to that feeling of exhilaration and despondency from passion that turns sour.
Jhene Aiko speaks to me. Of anger tinged with longing fuelled by loathing of the desire we hold for the one we want.
Jhene Aiko speaks to me. Of public spectacle in baffling indecision, powered by fleeting moments of private clarity.
Jhene Aiko speaks to me. Of the R&B vibes infused with hip-hop’s obsession of flesh. Of singing with flow. Of bass patterns that move with soul.
Jhene Aiko speaks to me. The earth is less land, more sea. The beauty and tragedy of life isn’t in remaining anchored to permanence. It’s in motion, as we Sail Out.
