Tag: love

Sunday Scribble #11: It’s the art of loving fr fr

Pheladi SethusaLeave a comment

When weeks of having Olivia Dean on repeat, collided with immersion in the words of bell hooks and Kennedy Ryan.

Working towards a ‘love ethic’ in a reality riddled with genocide, seemingly unchecked evil of all shades and material and spiritual poverty, can seem almost impossible. But rereading bell hooks’ all about love, provided the grounding I needed after being swept up in Kennedy Ryan’s steamy romance,This Could Be Us and all the while being serenaded daily by Olivia Dean’s affirming album, The Art of Loving since October 2025. They texts were connected and timely in a way that went beyond coincidence for me. I will attempt to synthesise some of the overlaps across the three projects that have left an indelible mark in my spirit.

Love yourself

To me, self-love is at the root of all three works, not the magical thinking kind that instructs: ‘love yourself before anyone else can’, but the kind that posits that an awareness of self and directly addressing patterns and behaviours that have informed past relationships. An exercise which then allows us to communicate more honestly and choose partners based not on our traumatic inferences and wounds, but our shared commitment to mutual growth.

When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.

bell hooks, all about love, pg. 6

Of all the illuminating things hooks writes about love and loving, the thing that continues to stay with me is the idea that love is essentially rooted in care, choice, justice and nurturing one another’s growth, that the feelings it brings, the act of ‘falling’ in it, and any abusive betrayals simply stand in contradiction to living a life founded on a true love ethic. As intimate relationships often mirror or are informed by their immediate environment, a love ethic needs to underpin the broader society’s workings – a society moved by love rather than greed, violence and other injustices. But that is not the society and culture we live in.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

bell hooks, all about love, pg. 140

In Ryan’s novel, the protagonist, Soledad, is forced into a journey of self-discovery by tumultuous circumstances, but quickly realises that her self-love or ‘self-partnering’ journey may require growing in love with another rather than practicing strict solitude rooted in denial of desire and care. It helps that Judah Cross (oh Judah Cross) is similarly trying to engage in a practice of prioritising self, through increased accountability, patience and intentional communication. And, the cherry on top, they both use all about love as a guide to work through this season and towards the other. Ryan is undoubtedly an incredible author, who manages to deftly marry romantic escapism with serious issues.

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I’ll be my own pair of safe hands, it’s not the end it’s the making of.

Olivia Dean, So Easy (To Fall in Love), track 5 on The Art of Loving

The Art of Loving as a whole, feels like a warm hug, reassurance that you are more than enough and worthy of effort (internally and externally). That the mistakes and missteps of your past aren’t defining, they are lessons that will help you communicate your wants and hurts with clarity. Dean’s self-love is rooted in radical honesty and staying true to oneself; a kind of reflexivity that allows one to honour whichever version of ‘love’ they are after. The yearning and care she speaks of are not rooted in melancholy, ownership but consideration.

Platonic love as vital anchorage

There aren’t enough sonnets for friendships. Note enough songs for the kind of love not born of blood or body but of time and care. They are the one we choose to laugh and cry and live with. When lovers come and go, friends are the ones who remain. We are each others constants.

Kennedy Ryan, This Could Be Us, pg. 95

We all know, or maybe have been, the friend who drops everyone and everything the minute they find themselves in a new relationship. Spending less and less time with their core support system, to maintain the newer, shinier connection that has entered their lives. There’s nothing wrong with making time to genuinely get to know someone and nurture what may be a more fragile connection. In our context, maintaining any relationship, romantic or otherwise, is made all the more difficult by demanding jobs, staying sane, fed and fit. But friendship isn’t an optional extra, a nice to have, it’s essential to living and loving well. Studies suggest that women’s friendships help us live longer, make us healthier and are most cases the only place we receive reciprocity and considered care. Obviously this isn’t a blanket fact or experience, some friendships (like relationships) are toxic or operate in misalignment, which would then bear very different results. So let’s healthy friendships are lifesaving for clarity’s sake. In This Could Be Us, this is evidenced by the way Soledad’s friends jump in to help her without question in moments of distress, in how they encourage her professionally and personally, and in how they hold her accountable. This accountability should, but doesn’t always translate in romantic relationships. hooks points out that for most women the stringent, unforgiving standards we have for friends, falls away when we encounter romantic partners because we are socialised to idealise the codependency of ‘other halves’ and put romantic love on a pedestal.

When we see love as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.

bell hooks, all about love, pg. 136

Which is why the line, “who would do that to a friend, let alone the one you love” in Dean’s Let Alone The One You Love, is the one of the saddest for me on the album, it gives into that acceptance of elevated difference. In its solemn lament, it’s an illustration of the devaluation of friendship.

Love is in the doing

The desire to love is not love itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act oof will—namely, both an intention and action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

bell hooks, all about love, pg. 172

Something I have had to remind myself of, quite sternly at that, int the last few months, is that love is a verb, it’s a doing word. To say it is easy, to mean it requires more than the eight letters it takes to type it out. It’s the people who keep their promises, who show up, who consider you and who take any opportunity to demonstrate it in whatever way they can. I have also worked on being a better friend myself, it was one of my goals for the year, to prioritise my friendships and be intentional about their maintenance.

When conversing with the heart, expect it to talk back, to revisit the pains and disappointments that left the deepest dents and scratches.

Kennedy Ryan, This Could Be Us, pg. 216

The doing also extends to self responsibility and accountability – keeping the promises you make to yourself, committing to the routines you know you need, and truthfully engaging in introspection. The vulnerability on The Art of Loving acted as quiet confirmation that I was in the ‘right’ path insofar as my personal ‘doing’ was going. It more closely spoke to who I was becoming than who I was. It was a also a good reminded that you don’t ever really lose the love you have shared, especially if you shared it freely, and that helped me process a lingering hurt.

Love is never wasted when it’s shared.

Olivia Dean, A Couple of Minutes, track 11 on The Art of Loving

Sunday Scribble #4: Solo dolo

Pheladi SethusaLeave a comment

Waiting for others can be a self-imposed prison sentence.

A much younger version of me once wrote that she did not want to get used to being alone on her tumblr blog.

I came across the frank plea in a recent archival exercise to transcribe text posts from that blog onto record cards (trying to have less of myself scattered across the internet, lol). Unfortunately, 24-year-old Pheladi, that’s exactly what we have had to do. Not just get used to it, but get good at it, really good at it.

At the time, it would be fair to describe my loneliness as nothing more than a dull ache, felt in short, sharp pangs months, sometimes years apart. The intensity of that ache has only grown over the years, its length and breadth sometimes overwhelming and suffocating its host. I have had to get used to being alone out of necessity, out of only having myself to lean on when needed. I deliberately don’t want to say ‘not out of choice’, because I recognise that much of my aloneness is a choice. A choice rooted in a mixture of avoidance, inflexibility, insecurity, poor communication skills, extreme self-love, some bad luck and obstinacy in the face of obvious misalignment (amongst other things).

As a yearner™, year after year of being companionless was initially a terrifying and alienating reality to step into. For context, I used to be the kind of person who left the house thinking ‘today might be the day I bump into the love the love of my life’ – legit, exhausting stuff. And the person who would happily ‘wait’ when some half-hearted lover had more urgent matters to see to than I. And the person who would save experiences and films to watch with this fictional other. But thankfully, somewhere along the way (maybe when my frontal lobe was fully developed), I realised that my life was happening anyway and that I should probably take part in it regardless of who was along for the ride. The realisation came about a year or two after that initial tumblr post, when I was living in a new city and, by virtue of not having my usual support structure of friends and family, had to learn to truly enjoy my own company.

I started with a small but important ritual on Sunday afternoons, a solo breakfast or brunch date with a book or the Sunday papers in tow as my only companions at the table. I recall the tinge of embarrassment that first crawled up my throat when I asked for a table for one. Heightened by the occasional look of pity offered by the waitstaff helping me that day. But those slow Sunday afternoons catalysed the courage needed to then go on solo theatre dates, to music shows, and even solo trips in the years that followed.

Following my own whims, without much consultation, is one of my greatest freedoms. One I do not take for granted because I can only imagine how many women before me, in my bloodline alone, never had the luxury of choice. The ability or space at any given moment to truly make decisions that served their greatest good or curiosity. I come from a long line of women who have always had to consider themselves last, to wait, and to serve at the behest of others. That I don’t have to do that at all is a privilege I carry with pride. I can book the thing, eat whatever my stomach calls to, buy whatever catches my wandering eye, go to the curated experience and chat to strangers, and come back to relative peace.

Like previous posts have alluded to, being in my 30s has allowed me to shed certain identities and ‘single’ is one of them. It’s not something I overexplain anymore, or something I care to dissect at length when I interact with the people I love. It’s a fact, sure, but not one that speaks to who I am as a person or what my life looks like. I still deeply yearn for companionship, but it no longer defines how I move or feel about myself.

Literary Postmortem: Essays in Love

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I know the internet girlies tell us we should never spin the block, but let me tell you that doesn’t count for books and the second or third or fourth time is often better than the first.

I first read Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love some eight or so years ago when I joined a new book club shortly after moving to Cape Town to start a new gig and life. I remembered laughing and nodding along a lot, so I decided to pick it up again when I needed a pick me up a while back. My slim recollection was correct, I laughed and nodded along more upon my second read. Time and one too many relatable experiences also made sure that I cried a bit too this time around.

As someone who often has to imbibe whatever can be learned about relationships through external media and anecdotes, the writing style in this book invited an intimacy which placed me in the middle of the room when they were fighting, alongside him on taxi rides and embedded in the neural networks that carried his stream of consciousness. De Botton allows us to be flies on the wall, inviting us into this relationship and its journey from start to end. With chapter titles like ‘The Fear of Happiness’, ‘Romantic Terrorism’ and ‘Psyco-Fatalism’ one is never too far from learning some cool historical and philosophical insights while relating to the more personal linkages. The numbered paragraphs in said chapters initially look like an odd choice but it actually helped move the narrative along quite neatly.

The critique of modern love and our strange passage through it remains my most memorable takeaway from this book; it is reflective and honest about what it takes to be with another person and highlights the inner conflicts that ultimately make/break such unions. Upon a second read, I probably like it more now than I did as the hopeful romantic I was when I read it some eight years ago.

As always, the best bits below:

Growing love affair

Pheladi SethusaLeave a comment

There’s just something really special about capturing a frozen moment in time. A look, a smile, a moment that would otherwise fade from your cerebral structures.

I remember the first time I got to do what I’d seen my dad do time and time again. I begged to get a disposable camera that I could take along to my very first school camp. It was yellow and black and the most valuable thing I had ever owned.  I was only ten so most of the pitcures were a mess.

Early morning shoot at the Chinese Police Forum. Photo: Pheladi Sethusa
Early morning shoot at the Chinese Police Forum. Photo: Pheladi Sethusa

But so began a tradition. Every camp that rolled around saw me getting a little camera to take to camp. For me it was about documentation, about having visual aids that would support the stories I’d tell my family. Getting photos developed was the most exciting part of the experience because by then I had long forgotten what I’d managed to capture and the developed prints would be a pleasant surprise.

I knew I liked photos. That I like taking them, seeing them and being in them.

A few camps later and technological advancement had changed the game up. At about 14/15 digital camera’s had become commercially accessible.  Naturally I just had to have one. Who wouldn’t want to see their photo’s seconds after they’d taken them? It didn’t take much convincing to get my dad to buy me my first digital camera.

It was a thing of beauty. All those buttons and things that helped me not to miss.

Suddenly it became about more than smiley group photo’s. It became about landscapes and the extraordinary things that I saw around me. It became about the things that I wanted to capture. The things that I saw and how I saw them.

Over the years as the passion for the workings of the lens has grown, so has the need to do more than just capture frozen moments.

Now I want the composition,  the subject and back/foreground to tell a story. To do more than jog my memory. For the narratives to extend beyond the self.

I think that’s what I hope to do. I’m still learning and very keen to do so. Still trying to figure it out.

To see a little of what I have done so far, visit: therebble.tumblr.com 🙂