Wednesday 9 June 1999

This night I re-discovered an interesting effect. While playing "It must have been love" on my CD player, if I closed my eyes and held my hands in front of me and a little to the sides with palms up, the insides of my palms would start to feel quite cold; like really chilly air was collecting in the cup of my palm.

Better than hairy, I guess.

For some reason, that particular Summer Hits CD (a few years ago) also had a song called "What is love?" - not that it did attempt an answer, that I could glean. The poor guy singing might just as well have moaned as mouthing those particular lyrics. I played it a lot, for the music was quite fetching.

What is love? Why, "love" is a name for those instincts that attract us to other people. As children we are attracted to our parents, so we can survive. We don't know that's why, we just feel and act. As young folks, we are usually attracted to the complementary gender, which comes in handy if our genes are to survive for another generation. Again, we don't really need to figure this out. It just feels right. And as mature adults, we love our children, and eventually grandchildren, thus making sure that at least a part of ourselves get a good start on the next round in the circle of life.

Pretty prosaic, huh?

Additionally, we love our friends, and we love various foodstuffs, both of which ideally help ensure our survival. Of course, sometimes one or more of the above go horribly wrong. Instincts are rough and general things, modified mainly by early childhood experiences and the odd mutation.

So you may say that I am cynical, but we both know one thing: When it comes to stuff like this, what we say have hardly any influence on what we feel. Barely on what we do, except perhaps if there are people around to help us enforce our words. So if love comes calling (or, perhaps more likely, if I am calling) then my scientific speculations have very little say in what happens.