love with every stranger, the stranger the better

because, hozier.

Would things be easier if there was a right way,

Honey there is no right way

And so I fall in love just a little, oh, a little bit

Every day with someone new

anyone who knows me knows that if there were one way to sum up my personality– or at least what i aspire for it to be, it would be through hozier's song someone new. hozier is an artist i have admired since years, and wasteland, baby! is an album that i particularly resonate with. naturally, it felt reasonable to write a short, emotional essay on the song that holds a special place in my heart.

who is a stranger, really? the old lady you passed by at the farmer’s market, whose skirt you closely admired for several minutes but were too socially anxious to actually compliment out loud, that random guy who spawned out of nowhere on your walks in the university, whom you now happen to see everywhere, or the dog you noticed by the street, whose ears you scratched until it wouldn’t stop wagging its tail?

and what makes them strangers? is it the comfort behind not knowing them, or them not being aware of your mannerisms? i lean towards the folk who despise being perceived. consequently, my preferred choice lies in the latter option. there’s an underlying sadness in realizing i am willing to let go of the possibility of someone getting accustomed to my mannerisms, if it comes at the price of them starting afresh, unaware of the mistakes i attempt to escape every night. strangers don’t care— or know of the unending times i have begged in altars comprising people who couldn’t stand a chance to stay. with them, i’m not the girl who might be the mean girl in someone’s diary, or the girl who couldn’t love enough, or the girl who loved too much. i have never been on my knees for strangers.

lack of judgment makes it easier to disregard expectations. i don’t need to concern myself with hiding the cracks, or explain my quietness, or respond warmly or gloomily depending on baffling social constructs, or decode the dozens of those stubborn, white lines on my upper arm, or shave my armpits, or argue about why i wanted rachel to end up with joey.

it feels rather unnecessary to ramble about performativity on a platform where every second piece has already gotten it covered. but does it even count as a performance if it’s being done in front of a stranger? you’re a clean slate to them, so it is only fair that they will project their own distorted, alien meanings to you. they do not carry receipts produced as a result of consistent familiarity. there lies a fluidity in my existence when i no longer have to rehearse myself as a character in someone else’s narrative.

in a broader sense, strangers are often more than just people. they are possibilities— of a love that is characterised as more than just an anchor. something that surpasses our conception of possessing and being possessed. when there’s no room for fixing or hoarding, there’s no room for a right way to do things. the prospect of an emotion so pure and fleeting is such that it embodies a sense of mercifulness.

in the second verse, hozier (quite humorously, if you ask me) compares love to life’s distraction. some might interpret it with a comparatively lustful connotation, however to me, it is just that— love. it becomes particularly relevant in our current day scenario. i sit watching a societal collapse from my window, but it is somehow kinder with a hand holding mine.

no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, love doesn’t reside in grand gestures as much as it does unclaimed, in a little bit of everything. shared playlists, unprompted waves to a baby, an extended arm in front of an elevator, an assisting hand grabbing your suitcase by the baggage claim, eye contact shared over an inside joke. there is love in the shared breath of strangers, in the briefness that doesn’t seem to care for names or languages.

we spend so much time compartmentalizing and labelling our emotions, caught up in splitting our love between romantic, or platonic, or sexual, that we end up forgetting the point of loving as an act, rather than a noun. understanding the reason behind it would rarely bring us closer, or better, to committing to loving. because it doesn’t demand any names for existing— it just does.

think about the amount of times you might have missed out on the essence of it owing to shrouded hesitation. so what if you can’t tell whether the hot cashier actually likes you or is just doing their job? wouldn't it be enough to, for once, be met with a warm and gentle silence, instead of being defined or understood?

rather than treating it like a question, we must learn to live with love. it could often be too unfamiliar to be noticed, as short-lived as a tree’s leaf finding its way to the ground below. allow it to consume you, strangely, slowly, but surely. in the end, it wouldn’t matter who or how much you loved, but instead that you loved at all. and despite hundreds of ways of expressing and experiencing it, one idea remains constant— love, in all its strangeness, is enough.

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