Lesina Nakhid-Schuster. Photo / Supplied
When we speak from the heart, do we ever say anything original? Why is it that love talks in cliches? "The mind may grow wise," as the great Tracey Thorn sang, "but the heart just sulks and it whines and remains a child."
Such considerations had to be reckoned with in last night's episode of the longest-running series in New Zealand television history, The Bachelorette, the show which studies two pretty women being pursued by nine handsome men with limited English.
The guys were sitting around at the latest interminable cocktail party when Lesina breezed in, and asked, "What are you talking about?"
"Our feelings," droned Logan.
"Hahaha!" she giggled.
"My walls are up," whined Liam.
"You have to share your feelings," instructed Lily.
"I don't want to be in the friend zone," sulked Steve.
"I'm not perfect," said Lesina.
"My mind is boggled," blathered Jesse.
"Lesina's a hard read," sulked Mike.
"Hahaha!" giggled Lesina.
"Give me a f*****g rose," Mike whined.
"Dude, calm down," Lesina countered.
"Terence has a nervous energy around me," said Lily.
"Yeah cos like I mean yeah I don't know eh bro," droned Terence, nervously.
"Hahaha!" giggled Lesina.
"I'm here for me," whined Aaron.
"I can feel the walls are coming down," droned Liam, or maybe it was Quinn, or Richie, or all of them in harmony.
God it was chronic. But we're all dumb beasts in the fields of the human heart. The dialogue on The Bachelorette may want to make you scream, may want to make you despair, may want to make you saw your head off with a rusty blade, and yet who among us can do any better, who can articulate the symptoms, ecstasies, griefs and various assorted departmental offices of love?
They may seem like wastes of space when they open their mouths but the guys and girls of The Bachelorette are like everybody else. They desire. They hurt. They worry. They want to know what love is. They talk absolute crap most of the time; and most of the time, the things they say aren't what they mean. They're buying some time, they're evading the point. They're trying to keep their head above water, they're hoping it'll all turn out okay.
There's a sketch by playwright Harold Pinter, set in a job interview, where an applicant is interrogated by a woman. She asks him, "Do women frighten you?" The stage direction is for a red light to flash on and off in time with her rapid-fire questions: "Their clothes? Their shoes? Their voices? Their laughter? Their stares? Their way of walking? Their way of sitting? Their way of smiling? Their way of talking? Their mouths? Their hands? Their feet? Their shins? Their thighs? Their knees? Their eyes?"
And the applicant blandly replies, "Well it depends what you mean really."
It was a bit like that on The Bachelorette last night. "I'm sick of all the hard-hitting questions," whined Mike. "I just want to have fun!"
He's an applicant in the game of love. He'll just have to wait for Lesina to let him know but the anxiety is driving him mad. The guy looks like a nervous wreck. It's as though he's asking the same question that Tracey Thorn sings over and over at the end of her ballad: "Why don't you love me? Why don't you love me? Why don't you love me?"