I’m on the train listening to Steven Nadler’s Think Least of Death on Spinoza. A few years ago, I started reading Ethics to impress a crush or two, and it hurt my brain, but I was captivated by Spinoza’s proofs for god— by the intertwining of logic and faith. So I kept reading as best I could. I wrote a long poem in the form of the proofs. But it still hurt my brain so I’m listening to Nadler.
Today I keep thinking about Spinoza’s thoughts on desire via Nadler as interlocutor. Something like desire is appetite plus awareness. I keep thinking about desire.
After my last post on naming and Marvin Gaye, I decided I wanted to write about “I Wanna Be Where You Are”. And why not write about Marvin’s in conversation with Michael’s?
Released only a few years apart, these two expressions of wanting couldn’t be more different in sound, tone, and energy. Michael’s is a cloying beg—a petition for forgiveness. The speaker has left the addressee willingly, even if now feeling regret. Facing the possibility that he has left his love’s mind in his absence, the speaker quells the addressee’s presumed worry by promising “I’m coming, back to where I should have always stayed.” This expression of desire is also about time—please don’t close the door on our future he asks, and the song as a whole is about the clarity of hindsight.
Marvin’s desire takes a different shape. This is an anthem across a distance that seems against his will. And it’s a tribute beyond the end of time. It’s foremost a bedtime song dedicated to his three children. He tells them each goodnight by name. In the edited cut that made the album, the song fades out as Marvin sings “Goodnight yall, I’ll always love you.”
But recently, for personal reasons I have previously and near-incessantly alluded to, I’ve been compulsively listening to the expanded edition of I Want You on the way to work, saving Think Least of Death for the way home. Instead of fading out after the dedication to his children, the extended cut of “I Wanna Be Where You Are” returns to Marvin’s established (obsessive…) custom of naming his love at the time, Janis Hunter. He says her name again and again like a spell, as if to conjure her closer. The lengthy outro is, and I can’t stress this enough, so good. It lets the horns come to the forefront, as Marvin near-whispers, where you are, anywhere you are until the song finally ends. (As I’ve previously stated, one of my most cherished qualities of soul is how unhurried it is). As it progresses, the chords shift from major (?) to minor (?) which sounds to me like a sonic iteration of proximity and distance to proximity again. I want to be anywhere you are is an acknowledgment that we’ll be far away from each other again, but our love can reach, withstand.
Both songs are about return: one an asking for forgiveness, for permission to return. One a promise to come back, a promise of eternal love. Both are about closeness and longing and of course, desire—appetite yes, wanting, but also the awareness of distance. Maybe Michael’s wanting is appetite-heavy. Maybe Marvin’s awareness comes with maturity, with heartbreak, with distance.
Michael ain’t have no business singing bout grown folks stuff anyway. But I love both songs dearly.
It’s fitting that my first experience with Spinoza was born out of desire and a crush or two—however fleeting, or superficial, or misplaced. I’m leaving for the weekend, and I brought a notebook to write love letters, as I have done since the beginning. I am hyper aware of the distance, even if only for 72 hrs.