Nerd Nite Presentation on the "Science of Love"

Originally performed at Nerd Nite Austin 41: Word Nerds

Hello, I'm Krissi Reeves. Some of you regulars might recognize me from behind the bar. I am also one of the owners here at ND and I am also a writer, a solo performer and a poet.

I'd say that there are times in our lives when we all consider ourselves poets... of Shakesperean degree. And that is when we are madly and deeply in love. It is very possible that this is the time when we are simultaneously going absolutely ape-shit bananas...to an astronaut driving cross country in diapers degree . Which is much less poetic.

Poets love love. We also love metaphors. Author Mulan Kundera says that metaphors are decidedly dangerous because a single metaphor can give birth to love. When someone speaks to us in metaphor, we store those words into our poetic memory  - the special place in our brains where we store everything that charms or touches us and makes our lives beautiful.    

This is an elegant interpretation of why and how we love and probably explains why so many of us become self-declared poets when we fall in love. It is this particular Kundera book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, that led me to question more adamantly "why we love," “how we love” and more importantly "why do we love the people we do?" These questions have been asked a billion times, of course,  by dufus teenagers and worldly scholars alike. And of course asked for six seasons and two movies by a much more watered-down urban fahsionista version of Kundera, fictional sex columnist, Carrie Bradshaw. As she puts it “why is it that we always end up leaving  the good guy for some hot guy with a motorcycle and no checking account?" 

There are a lot of why's when it comes to love, sex and romance. So, driven by curiosity and my stubborn need to get it “right”, I began a quest for information. And I found lots of interesting data, but sadly no real answers.

However, I’d like to suggest three books on the science of love: 

This book, Phantoms in the Brain, really doesn't touch too much on the topic of love, but the author shares fascinating case studies of people with brain damage. I chose this book while going through a hard breakup so the subject matter of brain damage spoke to me. This book is an awesomely weird read and it also inspired the poem I am going to perform in just a moment.

Another book delving into the subject of the brain in love is The Brain in Love, by Dr. Daniel Amen. Some consider this guy a kook, many consider him an expert. But all this man does all day is study brain scans and his theories are worth checking out. In fact he declares that a healthy sex life cures everything from heart disease to depression to symptoms of ADD. So, if you are looking for a list of reasons to have sex, as if we need any, this is the book to read. Again, written by board certified psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel G. Amen. Or Dr. Amen, as I like to call him.

The next book on my list is a book I have not read yet. Nope. But, I know it's a gem. The book on why we love is called “Why We Love?” by Anthropologist and Relationship Expert, Helen Fisher. This book inspired her Ted Talks, which are quite fascinating and I have watched them repeatedly. Dr. Fisher taught me that when we fall in the love, the area of the brain most stimulated is the ventral tegmental, which is the exact area of our brain that is stimulated by eating chocolate and snorting cocaine. And when I heard this fun fact, I let out a very loud, ohhhh. (light bulb)

With that said, next time you find yourself fucking, fighting or falling in love and totally bewildered by your own behavior, I would suggest picking up one of these books. But, SPOILER ALERT!, they will not help you. They will only validate what we already know, when it comes to the desperate desires of our hearts and the insatiable demands of our loins, we are helpless. It's out of our control. These impulses are buried deep in the most primal part of our brains....so just sit back and surrender to the agony and ecstasy of love and the eternal mystery of our profoundly poetic and forever follied human brains.

The Queenmothers Storm the Castle

The ageless gaggle of women swarming the front doors of the Hub Theater had surrounded me since my birth.  They were chatting and laughing. Punctuating each elongated vowel with a delicate dangled wrist and a smile. The downtown streetlight bounced from the sheen of their freshly pressed pantsuits. The moonlight boomeranged from their dazzling zirconia studs.

These women were masters of blurred boundaries. Champion orators of mixed messages. My childhood memories remain filled with vignettes of these fancy misses assaulting my face with perfumed kisses. Lecturing me on the importance of brow plucking at the tender age of nine. Dragging me around to every discount shopping outlet in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex as if they were docents to the very finest of retail collections. Standing on their teeny-tiny decorative soapboxes delivering moral maxims and domestic living tips learned from the matrix of daytime TV. Wanting so much to craft me into a proper woman, but subsequently creating a calamity of insecurity and confusion.

Yet, despite the genetic coaxing to remain hush-hush when it came to matters of personal business, I somehow managed to wiggle out of their nets and onto the stage. Which subsequently lead me to discover solace in the expose. Self-acceptance in the humility.  Unabashed ego-rushes from making people laugh.

This new “hobby” of mine made the women extremely uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, there they were. The Queenmothers of my hive. They came to support me and they were glowing.

In theory, I should have been glowing too. But, I was a sweaty mess. It was opening night of my one-woman show, after all. In the city I had determinedly abandoned a decade ago. Tonight was to be my triumphant return! Tonight, I would show the world that I was no longer an awkward preteen moping around in bear-trap braces and army green Cavariccis… but rather, a tall, beautiful, (slightly intoxicated), well-spoken and exuberant woman with finely plucked eyebrows and a bargain mini-dress to boot. Tonight, I would be a sensation!

(If I didn’t bolt out the backdoor of the theater frantically screaming and violently waving my arms in the air. It seemed a like a tantalizing option.)

Tonight, I would share a story.  A story of a lonely summer in which I spent most of my days supine and naked on the hardwood floors of my matchbox apartment drinking endless bottles of Shiraz and shamelessly flipping my cheeto-stained fingers through stacks of celebrity gossip rags. All the while, aimlessly searching for love, of course.

Tonight, the Women would learn more about my character in thirty minutes than they had ever known in thirty years of raising me. Terrifying. Or maybe not. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to stomach the show. Maybe they would quietly exit the theater with their suburban-chic handbags pulled over their heads at first mention of my adult bedwetting fiasco(s.) Who knows. It could go either way, really.

Or, maybe they would get me. Like, really get me. Krissi. Their daughter, niece, second cousin. The girl they meticulously yet carelessly raised. Maybe…