As we prepare to march as part of the 2025 Manchester Pride parade, celebrating the theme of love, Caro Dixey (Soprano 1, she/her) explores the complexities of the word:
Song writers, the modern-day poets of our time, have plenty to say about love:
All You Need is Love, it’s Endless, a Crazy Little Thing, it’s In the Air, it can be found in a Hopeless Place, and you certainly Can’t Buy it. But of all the songs about love that are out there, it’s Foreigner’s question I’m always flummoxed by: I Want to Know What Love is.
The word itself originates from the Proto-Indo-European word leubh, meaning “care” or “desire”. It evolved into the Latin word lubet and then libet, which fathered the word libido. Then we get to the early Germanic iterations lubo, liube, liebe, and lob, that each translate to the modern meaning, except liube, which is connected with joy.
Even in the genesis of the word love, it seemed to span a multitude of meanings: care, sexual desire, and happiness, and I am no closer to understanding exactly what it is.
You may have guessed this is something I’ve dedicated a fair amount of 3am thinking to. And in all that thinking I have come up with some theories.
Here’s my take on what this four letter word has to say when it fills a gap between I and you:
I love you like I love vanilla cheesecake
I love vanilla cheesecake but I’m not in love with it.
It’s a silly series of letters anyway, the word “love”.
It’s not patient. It’s not kind.
It’s not romantic or sweeping or
played out in black and white on a train station platform.
I love you like I love the smell of autumn
Like the colour yellow and dark chocolate truffles in a pretty pink box.
I’m not exactly clear what this word ‘love’ is about.
Sounds kind of messy, and exhausting
and hard. Then mind-numbingly painful,
And so heartbreakingly difficult to maintain for any time.
I love you like I love classical music
Because you both bring me peace and sense of okay-ness.
It might not make sense but that’s all I can say.
You’re messy and exhausting
Not romantic or even sweeping.
You’re you. Just you. And me? I’m me.
So let’s not say I love you or you love me
Let’s love vanilla cheese cake and yellow and the autumn.
Let’s leave our feelings felt and not heard,
Existing in our hearts but never in a book.
And whenever you want to know how I feel about you,
I’ll share my vanilla cheesecake and not say a word.
Just a silly series of words then? Well, not exactly. It’s certainly a versatile expression, to say the least.
We use it to describe our feelings about people, places, food, TV shows, colours, music, the list is endless. We can love romantically, platonically, it can be enduring or fleeting, it is healing and at the same time it can hurt (a lot) but at the risk of ending up writing a 100,000 word essay on the matter, let me try to answer my burning question, in the simplest terms possible.
For me, love is acceptance, feeling safe, being able to be your authentic self, free from discrimination, fear of rejection and harm.
In short: love is everything that pride stands for.
And the Manchester Proud Chorus will be standing (and walking) for love on Saturday 23 August.
Read more of Caro’s poems on her blog, by clicking here.