Socratic Love : Queer Love - By Sue Goldin (Johnny De Philo)

“I absolutely believe that love is the highest form of friendship, or you could say that friendship is the highest form of love, but I don’t mean by that non-sexual relation. I am more interested in the Socratic view, which is opposed to the Platonic view. I’m working on a show now, which is a rethinking of Plato’s Symposium, and it deals with the question: what does it really mean to be friends with somebody? And on some level it does mean to have a sexual side, to be there in difficult times, sometimes it just means you have to be there on Tuesday afternoons at 2 o’clock to work at the gym, and that’s your level of friendship, there is nothing else going on. Or there are other things that create this bigger body called love or friendship - I actually see them as interchangeable in a certain sense. Che Guevara used to say that a true revolutionary is always guided by feelings of love, and I am totally into that, and believe that it becomes the basis of friendship. All these things just allow one to survive in the world, where you are not just reflecting each other, but you are just there, in the dwelling, as it were, and the friend only gets in your way when it is required. In the interview with Jeffrey what we were trying to talk about was how the gay community, by which I mean male, female, transgender, etc., sets a community when it’s such a hated object. To me it does it on the basis of love and friendship, and the fact that it’s a gay community just emphasizes the sexual side of it. Because of the way in which AIDS and HIV-related tragedies have hit, for me there is a real anger involved, which I wanted Jeffrey to talk about more, and which he refused to do. My feeling was that there are times when rage and violence are appropriate. That isn’t necessarily counterposed to love; it is often precisely rooted in love. That is what creates the ferocity of it.” - Sue Goldin (Johnny De Philo)