Love and Hip-Hop: A Contemporary Reimagination of Plato’s Symposium
In Plato’s Symposium, a number of eulogies are spoken in praise of the Greek god Eros. What follows will not be a reinterpretation of Plato’s “Symposium”, but will follow a modern bevy of characters from the realm of hip-hop as they eulogize Eros from their own unique perspectives. The speeches will be much more worldly in nature, incorporating the attitudes presented by the speaker’s in their real life (interviews, public statements, etc.) as well as the personas cultivated in their music. Each speech will dialogue with one or more speeches or themes found in Plato’s “Symposium”as they put forth their own thoughts on Eros. There is no physical context for these speeches. They are simply mock interpretations in a vacuum where it is assumed that the speakers have read Plato’s Symposium (and possibly other works).
Vince Staples
Lyric: “I’m searchin’ for atonement, do I blame my darker tone?” (“Summertime”)
Eros is a bitch. It’s gotta be a she, man, the way she sneaks up on you like a thief in the night. My granny spent her whole life trying to push that old religion on me. She was always talkin’ about how I needed to find Jesus. The Bible is for the birds though. I completely lost faith – if I ever had any – by the time I was 13. But I always knew that I was missing something. I tried to cover it up. All the violence I saw in my city numbed me to life. I couldn’t imagine that there was something out there that connected individuals across space and time. But then one day I felt it. I fell in love with this girl. I always thought love was for the weak, or at least it made you weak. Kept people from thinking straight, something that’s hella dangerous where I come from. It did make me act differently. And it wasn’t just around her. Every word I spoke, every movement I made began to take on new meanings. Of course, that didn’t stop me from committing crimes and doing dirt. What Phaedrus was saying about how love pushes us to give the appearance of virtue for fear of appearing shameful to our lover (267) makes sense to me. But it just ain’t true. We’re all human, so fear and shame are emotions we have to deal with. But they can’t be fundamental to love. They’re too weak, too base. I didn’t change some of my ways out of fear. The love I felt transformed my soul. I became a better person through and through. And even when I fell short, it made me sad but not ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed because I knew I could do better, and that knowledge fed my optimism. Maybe it’s because my expectations of love were never ideal and unrealistic. I never had any expectations at all so there was really nothing to fall short of.
Can you recognize Eros? She likes to wrap herself in disguises, beautiful and ugly. I guess that’s why she’s daemonic. Not because she’s in between, but because she is amorphous. I don’t think she plots on how to get us. She has to have a purpose though. I guess that purpose would be for redemption. Life is meant to sustain life and continue the cycle. Whenever we break that cycle, or intend to do something to break the cycle, we’re in the wrong. Eros grounds us and brings us back. So when those superstars are balling on the court, that’s Eros. Even if their motives are selfish, they still provide a valuable service to those watching. We get to live vicariously through them. They take on the burdens of pain, discipline, and sacrifice so that we can identify with them in spirit without having to train our bodies. I guess that is similar to what Diotima was talking about when she spoke of human’s longing for immortality (300). But she was referring to our desire for immortality through the act of generation. In my example, humans are achieving immortality through empathy or being able to see from another’s perspective. When we use our imagination to identify with and take on the life of another, we gain their abilities. Their strength becomes our strength, and then we truly become limitless. Maybe it’s not immortality because we aren’t imagining our lifespan extending, but by being able to expand our conception of ourselves and experience the infinite vitality spread throughout the human race, we are able to feel a sense of power that eludes us without the help of Eros.
Eros manifests herself depending on how you react to her. Some people are prepared for it. They grow up around Eros. Well, we all grow up around Eros, essentially. But not all of us know how to identify her. So I guess it’s better to say that some people grow up learning the truth about Eros. Think about this. Pausanias believes that lovers are justified in any action they take for their lover. He speaks of lovers who “swear oaths” and “perform acts of slavishness,” but because of the fact that they are lovers, “there is a grace upon him,” (272). I wish that were true, but the cold hard truth is the ends don’t justify the means. That’s a twisted philosophy to hold. My intuition tells me that love is the key to atonement, but not in the sense that any acts performed in the name of love are given a free pass. The atonement comes from the ability of Eros to lead us towards virtue, or at least to desire it. Since that is the case, real love would never cause us to do what’s wrong for the sake of our lover. Men in my neighborhood pride themselves over the fact that they will kill anyone who even seems to threaten or disrespect the woman that they love. Eros is present in their hearts, but they don’t understand how to express the feelings that she brings with her.
Is Eros necessary to life? Sure, you could say that. But you also gotta be able to recognize her. She’s always there, but you gotta be trained. I like Diotama’s ladder metaphor, but I hope that she doesn’t mean to imply that one can only go up or down in their journey with Eros. We can experience Eros on different levels with different people at the same time. The journey is just too wild to be put so linearly. That’s just my two cents though.
Kanye West
Song: “I Am a God”
Eros is the purest form of release. When do we feel the most satisfied? When we release and cleanse our bodies. The movement of your bowels after a filling meal. The end to a night of passionate sex. Eros doesn’t fill us; she makes us empty. She causes us to become devoid of the senseless detritus we accrue in our everyday existence. Momentarily cleansed, we are able to experience life in its purest essence, stripped of the mindless minutia that prevents us from achieving our potential and unlocking our God level.
Eryximachus’ account sounds good. Harmony and balance are good ideals to strive for. But I wonder if we picturing the same feeling with different metaphors. If you see harmony and balance as the return to equilibrium of sorts, I’m sure that it can be equated with release. He uses similar language when he speaks of how the doctor (the ultimate doctor being Eros) “has the expert knowledge to instill it, or to remove it from those things which it is,” (276) with “it” being love. We disagree, however, on what exactly is leaving the body. If the doctor must possess “the expert knowledge of erotics of the body in regard to repletion and evacuation,” why would the doctor be evacuating love from the body? The answer lies in the false dichotomy that Eryximachus makes. There is no “noble and base” love. There is only love, and the misperception or interpretation of it. Base love is an oxymoron.
Let me touch back on what I mean by the release that Eros provides. Usually when we think of a substance being released, we think of an empty container that is now useless because it is not serving its purpose. This is a false analogy when it comes to Eros. While there is no such thing as base love, there are base parts of our life. Base activities, base thoughts, etc. As what is base in our life accumulates, we distance ourselves further and further from the divine, which is pure and noble. Eros simplifies us, allowing us an escape from the human conventions and social norms that bind our minds and souls from expansion.
Let me also not leave you under the impression that to experience release means to be stagnant. On the contrary, Eros can often be found in extravagance and gross indulgence. What separates these moments of quasi-transcendence from vulgar debauchery is the ability to hold on to the vitality experienced in these moments without becoming dependent on or addicted to the “high.” You have to develop complete control. Maybe I shouldn’t speak like that. Rather that’s the goal, what we’re striving for. I never saw Eros as a longing for what we don’t have (292), is it a twisted form of Eros when we long for what we can’t have? Does that make us fools? That would invalidate my longing for control in the midst of hedonism. But Diotima speaks of the longing for immortality, a state that we can never truly achieve. I think it ends like this: Eros only becomes twisted and foolish when one falls into the illusion of being able to attain what they long for. It’s a fine line to be sure, but those are the most fun of games.
Lauryn Hill
Lyric: “What is freedom but a fleeting notion/is this reality or just emotion/I would rather be a giver than/be apart of hurting you again” (Conformed to Love)
Eros is liberation, plain and simple. The experience of Eros should free you from the bondage. We all face constraints from society, from institutions, from physical limitations, and even from those that love us. People often talk about love as being transcendent. I think that’s true some of the time but that is not a part of Eros’ essence. You may not necessarily want or need to rise above a given situation, but the freedom to move and express your identity is the purest state to be in life.
Aristophanes’ allegorical story about the origins of human beings (279-282) is enticing but highly problematic. The notion that human beings are searching for their other half means that people are more likely to give up when problems arise. They will easily believe that if their partner was actually their soul mate, everything will progress smoothly. But that is a fairytale. Eros is fluid and not independent from our will. We can learn to love those around us. Eros doesn’t just spring forth with wild abandon. Eros can be summoned through action, poetry, and reflection as well as through happenchance.
This notion also encourages harmful power dynamics. If humans are meant to be with one other person, that other person (or one whom we believe to occupy that role) can exert an immense amount of control over our lives. They can say, “Look, you need me! I complete you. So shut up and deal with whatever I’m giving you.” This is the complete opposite of liberation…this is incarceration on the most fundamental level that we can imagine. Eros can be present when one is alone, but because it is so often present in our lives in relations with other people, I won’t accept a definition that doesn’t inherently provide a healthy power dynamic and agency to those involved.
I am reminded now of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Because the humans in the cave were sustained in bondage, they were not able to see the truth or the light. Only once a person was liberated from that state were they able to experience the Forms, which is reality in the purest sense. But in that story Plato never gives an account of the mechanism that allows us to become accustomed to the light of truth. This intermediary is Eros. Here I am in agreement with Diotima when she says of the power and daemonic nature of Eros,
“He interprets,’ she replied, ‘between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and incantation, find their way,” (295).
But I hate to leave this discussion in the metaphysical. Liberation comes in a myriad number of quite diverse forms.
The function of Eros is the reason why any movement of liberation must be rooted in love. We see this repeated time and time again in philosophies from leaders such as Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. Their words are more than just tired platitudes or pleasant niceties used to soothe the masses and feign religious conviction. Eros is the key to all struggles who end is to become autonomous. We find voice to such radical revisionings of society in black feminist writers such as bell hooks, who coined the term “politics of love” in the mid-90s.
Romantic love has no template to copy or ideal to envision. However any healthy form of Eros must connect the two lovers without resulting in a relationship based on dependency. I see some problems with my view. If both parties are completely free, what’s stopping Eros from engaging in frivolity, leaving and returning without any notice? I know this answer is scary, but maybe that is an uncertainty that we must come to terms with. There is a price to be paid for everything, including liberation. Where do we strike the balance between people who are linked but who are not bound to each other? This is a question for one wiser than me. All I know is that we must be free in our actions, thoughts, beliefs, and journey with and through Eros.
Summation
There is an exhaustive list of perspectives to cull from in the world of hip-hop. The genre is often criticized for its portrayals of love as aggressive, possessive, and limiting. Less celebrated are the conscious figures who possess a greater understanding of truths underlying love. In this special age for hip-hop, even so-called “gangsta rappers” such as Vince Staples are able to articulate nuanced and simultaneously tragic and beautiful narratives. Hip-hop evolved from the African and distinctly African-American traditions around storytelling, making it an apt medium to explore the nature of Eros.