Preface To Devotion: Oh No A Religious Valentine's Day

There is an observation I've made before about taking pictures - they're a little like diary entries. But like diary entries, they can lack context. For example, I took this picture in Deep Ellum, Dallas, on November 27, 2018. It's as if I wrote in a diary, "I saw a cool sculpture of a heart that had bicycle parts & locks in & on it." It doesn't tell me why I was there, or if it was street art, or in a show I attended. What I do know is that it was a sunny day in late November 2018 & I took a picture of a sculpture that struck my fancy.

The picture has nothing to do with devotion, but it's hard to find pictures about devotion on the internet because it turns out the word "devotion" is not as Valentine's Day-friendly as I had initially thought. Indeed, almost all the pictures I can find are religious - including art for devotionals that religious people carry. I am not a religious person. I think about it at best academically. So the idea of religious devotion is not something I could easily wrap my head around - indeed, even when as a child I thought there might be a mean dude in the sky that punished me when I was bad (or at least would when I was dead), I found the concept of somehow loving, worshipping, praising that dude to be a little silly. Mainly I couldn't wrap my head around it - I understood Zeus & Thor & the Force in Star Wars (this is pre-midichlorian) far better than whatever nebulous concept of a god my mother & some of the people around me believed in.

So naturally when I chose the theme "devotion" for Valentine's Day, I thought of being devoted to one's partner - or a pet's devotion to its master. The religious angle had not even occurred to me.

& yeah I know Valentine's Day was named after a saint, but it's become a secular holiday much like Christmas has. It's not about some dude who ministered to persecuted Christians & was beatified for it - it's about candy & roses & cards. I doubt many of the people who like Valentine's day & "celebrate" even know it's from a tradition that involved early Christians. Just like (I'd argue) most of the people who exchange gifts at Christmas don't really think it's the birthday of a god's kid. It's just about presents & family & oh yeah getting off work.

It was therefore not my intention to do a religious Valentine's Day show. Heck, I don't even think "love" as a concept would make a good religion. But that's a discussion for later. How did I end up with this as my Valentine's Day theme? I'll tell you tomorrow.