Musical Musing: Jonathan Coulton “Skullcrusher Mountain”

What is love?

It would seem I’m on a Jonathan Coulton kick. Maybe it’s because I’m going to his show with Paul and Storm in Dallas on the 13^th. (I even bought a geeky t-shirt specifically to wear to the show in celebration! Yes, I’m that big of a geek.) This afternoon’s offering is about slightly odder song called “Skullcrusher Mountain.” I’ll wait here while you read that again. Yes, I did just say “Skullcrusher Mountain.”

So the idea in “Skullcrusher Mountain” is that there’s a mad genius scientist who abducts a woman and has her brought to his secret lair which he’s named… yes, you guessed it, “Skullcrusher Mountain.” He’s madly in love with her, but being that he’s, well, a mad scientist, and she’s not, it’s an unrequited love. She’s not really the sort who falls in love with evil geniuses, really, and no amount of half-monkey-half-pony monster gifts can really change how she feels for him. Only an evil genius mad scientist would think such a gift would work.

I see your hand moving to click off of this page… please don’t rush away so soon. I’m really going somewhere with this. The zombies are still outside, and I’m still in full possession of my brains, I promise.

Jonathan Coulton has used hyperbole and extreme circumstances to tell a story that you and I can relate to, and I see something in here worth considering when you think about it outside of the realm of hyperbole. Most of us are not evil geniuses, nor do we know any, nor will we ever be abducted by any. Coulton sets up an absurd situation to examine the idea of an unrequited love; how does it feel to be rejected by someone you love?

Or does he love her? Does he perhaps love the idea of being in love, or of being loved by someone else? Is he even capable of loving her? That’s a valid question, and it’s the one I want to consider – what does it mean to really love someone? What does love look like? (Told you I had somewhere to go with this one!)

This is a question that’s been near and dear to my heart for much of my life. What does it mean for someone to say “I love you”? What does that word “love” actually mean? Is it a nebulous, hard to define emotion you can’t quite quantify? Is it the choices you make every day, demonstrated in the way you live your life? Is it somehow a combination of both? (Am I crazy for thinking I can answer a question older than I am? Don’t answer that last one…)

I grew up in an abusive home. That’s not a secret I keep from people. It shaped the way I thought about love. I was told “I love you” by my abusers while they abused me. Something inside of me saw that there was a disconnect there – that “love” does not do the things they were doing. So even though I was told I was loved, I never believed it. Somewhere inside of me, I convinced myself that I was not loved, and that if I was, it was only when I actively was doing something to earn love. If my grandparents or aunts and uncles and siblings loved me, it was because I was doing something right that pleased them. When I wasn’t around them, I figured, at best, I didn’t exist to be loved. It wasn’t that they disliked me or hated me… I just figured that if I wasn’t around to earn their approval, I got filed away into a neutral corner until I came back into their field of vision again. I became a people pleaser, desperate to earn approval and love.

I was in my twenties before I was able to actively think through the idea that my abuser’s actions meant that they could not possibly love me… that their behavior was so incongruent with the very basic nature of what it means to love another human being that the two could never fit into a single whole. To this day, I tell myself that at least one of my abusers never intended to do this to me; that she honestly thought she loved me… but she did not comprehend what it means to love another person, and was therefore incapable of giving me the love I so desperately needed as a child. She was never intentionally evil (as the evil genius may never have set out to be evil) but her actions and her words never matched up, and evil was the result.

As heartbreaking as it was to realize that I had not been loved by the one person I’d thought had always loved me, it gave me the break I needed to begin to re-examine what love was, to see it from a fresh, healthy perspective. In the years that followed, I slowly learned that all of the family that I thought merely tolerated me had actively loved me all along. In the years that followed, I discovered that love never comes with expectations or demands, though it always comes with hope. In the years that followed, I learned what it meant to be loved, and my life has been remarkably different in the short time since I first dared question what love really looked like.

Love, to quote the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, is patient. That means it “bears provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship, pain, etc, with fortitude, calm, and without complaint, anger, or the like.” Love doesn’t lose its temper over petty stuff, because love is patient, and know that in the long run, petty stuff doesn’t matter. Love knows that life is more important that the little snags we hit in the road. Love knows that a little calm goes a long way in easing the path ahead. Love sees the mistakes our children and our mates make, and love doesn’t fly into a rage, but smooths them over. Love is patient.

Love is kind. It is gentle, benevolent, indulgent, considerate. Love gives of itself for the benefit of others. Love sacrifices of itself for the good of others. Love does not envy. Love does not wish ill on others because of their success. Love does not say “If I cannot have it, no one can.” Love rejoices with the success of others, increasing their joy.

Love is not prideful, nor does Love boast. Love is not self-seeking. Love has no need to puff itself up. Love has no need to sing its own praises, calling attention to itself. Love is never out for its own needs. Love is always putting others before itself… and never calling any attention to itself for doing so.

Love is not rude. Love is not easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love doesn’t cut people off in traffic, flip them off, or scream at them. Love doesn’t remember all the times your wife left the milk out, or your husband forgot to take the trash out, or your son forgot to make his bed. Love ignores all of these things, choosing instead to overlook them, choosing to not remember them.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love looks for the best in us all. Love longs for our best. Love pushes us to be our best, and cheers us as we reach for who we are born to be. When we discover the truth of who we are meant to be, Love comes alongside of us, and buoys us on, always driving us towards truth. Love hopes for our best… and yet takes us as we are.

Love always protects. Love does not encourage our failure. Love does not enable sin. There is a difference between unconditional love and condoning ugly behavior. Love knows this difference. Love always protects us… even if it must protect us from our own behavior.

Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love is convinced that your best is there, and is building you towards it. Love takes you where you are, trusting you. Love always hopes you will return love, always hopes that you will build yourself to the stronger, better you that Love knows you can be. And when you fail, when you prove untrustworthy, when you disappoint Love’s hopes… Love always perseveres. Love stays the course, even when you don’t. Love never leaves you, even when you leave Love. Love never fails. Love never fails. Beloved, read that again. Love never fails. Ever.

Love, by its very nature, is unconditional. It must be without condition, without strings attached. Love that is earned is a lie. Love that can be lost is a lie. Anything else is something else. Love, to be real love, must be unfailing, unconditional, and pure. And you can’t do that alone. I couldn’t do that alone.

That’s what it took me years to learn. That’s why I can say with certainty that my abusers did not love me. Love does not do what they did. Love is not a fleeting emotion… because “fleeting” violates the “perseveres” and “never fails” clauses of “Love”. Love is instead a willful choice you make, something you do intentionally. You choose to be a channel of Love, an open door for this active verb, a fountain for this water of life to flow through.

Loving someone is the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life… but it’s also the easiest. Because once you understand what it means to love someone, to really love them, you discover that you don’t do it alone. But you may find that opening yourself up to love one person means that you’re challenged to love more… and more than just your children. I think it’s a risk worth taking. Love has changed my life so completely that I can’t put it into words. After all… I don’t identify as an abuse survivor anymore. No, Beloved… I’m Beloved by God, called to a life of loving others. If I could do it, who can’t?