Finding Love Without Romance
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, we talk about living a life alone, but without loneliness. Slate senior editor Rebecca Onion talks with author Amy Key about her new book, Arrangements in Blue, and how Key has found fulfillment without romantic love.
In Slate Plus: The influence of Joni Mitchell’s album, Blue.
If you like this episode, check out: Why Medical Mysteries Plague Women
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the waves, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism and living without romantic love. |
| 0:13.0 | Every episode you get a new paraphernist to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds. |
| 0:17.0 | Today you've got me, Rebecca Onion, a senior editor at Sleet. |
| 0:21.0 | Later in the show, I'll be joined by author Amy Key. |
| 0:25.3 | Before I picked up Amy's new book which is called Arrangements in Blue, I didn't know her |
| 0:30.0 | work. And although I do love Joni Mitchell's album Blue, which provides a frame for this book |
| 0:35.2 | and inspires its title, I'm not usually a huge reader of music writing. |
| 0:40.0 | But what I was interested in was the personal story. |
| 0:43.5 | Amy describes herself as someone who had to learn how to live without romantic love, which |
| 0:48.8 | is what she calls it. |
| 0:50.5 | In the first few pages of her wonderful book, she describes her first encounters with |
| 0:54.2 | Joni Mitchell's record when she was a teenager. |
| 0:57.4 | When she would do what she calls, test her feelings against Blue's sentiments, looking forward |
| 1:02.3 | into the future. songs are like tattoos you know I've been to see before. She writes, |
| 1:25.0 | While I have certainly bled for romantic love, I've largely found myself living without it. |
| 1:32.0 | The last time I had a boyfriend I was 22. I'm about to turn 44. |
| 1:37.0 | In my early years of knowing Blue, I thought I was at the beginning of romantic love's presence in my life. |
| 1:42.0 | All beginnings incorporate the potential for me. a romantic love's presence in my life. |
| 1:43.0 | All beginnings incorporate the potential for an end. |
| 1:46.0 | I just had no idea how rapidly I'd get there. |
| 1:50.5 | The rest of her book is about the impact that this lack has had on her life and how she's come to terms with it. |
| 1:56.0 | It's writing about romance from the point of view that you rarely see explored, |
... |
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