S1 Ep 3 Solo Episode "Past Lives & An Invitation to Love

In this solo episode with our host, we start of with an attempt to define love itself. You’ll hear about Nik’s journey to creating The Love Department and more about what you can expect from Season 1 of this groundbreaking platform.

In this episode we talk about the movie “Past Lives” by Celine Song, why Nik created this show, and what she believes Love has to offer the world.

To support us on Substack, please visit www.thelovedepartment.substack.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the love department. It's hosted by Nick Lockhart.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

And then eventually we said, look, we can't carry on like this. We have to get back together. He knows what makes me anxious, and he also knows that when I have this brandy baby, the things that I do right now, I will not be able to do. Like I can't see myself without you.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

She's the strongest person I know. Like it's not even close. Like there isn't anyone else that I think is even remotely as strong as she is.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Greetings to you, wherever, whomever you are. This is Nick Lockhart. I'm the chief love officer of the love department. It is my pleasure to share this platform with you. Finally, after years of dreaming and months of creating, we made it to this place. And now you're here. I hope you stick around, find some common ground, and maybe find some sound wisdom in these episodes to improve your love life. I put a lot of effort into interviewing the guests and curating the right subjects for the brand, but I gotta say, when it came to my solo episode, well, I I was dumped on what to say. It almost doesn't seem fair to seek out to solve this kind of mystery. I lean on the shoulders of giants like Bell Hooks, Nikki Giovanni, Marianne Williamson, Jane Austen, Esther Perrell, Gary Chapman. The Living Ones, I would love to have as guests on this show for you because among them I have always found answers to some of my questions about love. But what of the millions of other questions I have? And here's where the love department comes in. I think when I started this podcast, even having just the idea for it, I realized how limited my knowledge of love was. Not because I didn't see it in my everyday life, but uh because I saw so many versions of it. I saw the kind that stayed, the kind that left. I saw the kind that prayed in hard times, and the kind that put hand to the plow. I saw the the kind that was very open, and I saw the kind that was very private. What remains, what wakes me in the middle of the night, is the question of how to do it, how to really love. And love well. It is the seemingly unknowable and yet very recognizable image of love that intrigues me. So rather than ask more questions, I was ready to listen for answers. I thought maybe it'd best to start with how I got here. I'm not just some girl with an ironically appropriate last name with a podcast. I am part of you, the part that seeks to understand their relationships. I've been unrequited, heartbroken, lovesick, love-struck, every attachment style. I've written about love in articles, books, poetry, songs, even a few stage plays and screenplays. And what I've noticed is that in whatever form love takes, it always looks differently, meaning it varies form. It can be so nebulous, even in those mediums. But it was always love. It was always love. And in my writing, it was important to me to explore the dynamics of human relationships and to seek to give definition to how we relate to one another. I'm no Carrie Bradshaw, although I do live in New York, and God knows she was an icon of this genre. My days of dating in this city are done, that is to say, as long as my partner will continue to call me his. But I do remember the days of wondering, hoping, of watching those movies and reading those books and feeling satisfied in those final scenes. And then when the credits would roll, I'd get this feeling that, well, I was alone again. I heard some stories recently from some single friends as well that reminded me that it is really, really hard out there these days. And so we'll talk about that on this show too. If you're looking for love, you're in the dating phase, be encouraged. The love department is here. And we're gonna have a good time. We're not going to ghost you after a couple of months. We're committed to you. And that brings me to my relationship. I'll share what I can and keep private what I will, but it is a sacred space to me. One in which I've learned more about love and relationships than any other. Totally not a plug for that, but I am really, really fun over on that platform. I enjoy sharing the things that I've learned because that's what all of my favorite thought leaders have done for me. And while I'm no master at relationships, I'm getting better at being in one day by day. And so if you were to ask me right now on this episode of the Love Department, season one, how I would define love or what love has taught me, I would say that it has taught me to keep going deeper. And it's my hope that with this show, we'll do that together. I said in the introduction to episode one of this podcast that never doubt I love. And while the Shakespearean quote is true, I have been very loved in my life. There were so many moments where love was not so easily found. You'll hear me share some of those throughout the seasons of the show as well when appropriate. But I suppose it is from these doubts that the love department also arrives. Love has always had this great promise to save us. But and this is gonna get a little high-flying here, but I've always believed that love is who we are. We just have to return to it to remember and to recall that the part of us that was born to love and in love, it is who we are. It's when we lose touch with that that all the doubts creep in about what love really is and who we really are. Maybe that's why I always cry at weddings. That part of me remembers it comes alive. Ah this is love. This is what love can be. Because it's kind of perfect in that moment, right? The couple, they're standing at an altar of some kind, surrounded by all the people who love them. And that's about as perfect as a marriage will ever get or will ever be again. Most of the couples I've interviewed can tell you that their weddings and dating life and their marriages are far from it. But that is what I want to hear. I want to hear the real stuff, not just the photos that evoke my tears of joy. I want to know the stories of how they got where they are. I want to hear the things that came after they joined lives. And if a couple isn't married, why that's been the right choice for them. If they have many partners, what has that taught them about the nature of love? I was recently reading a romance novel, I won't say which, in order to spare the author my not so glowing review. But I remember being on page 45 thinking, I already know where this is going. The characters who have already met but don't realize it, they're gonna end up together around page 150. Something will happen, they'll have to be separated, and then somehow the great power of love will draw them back together. Was I setting myself up for disappointment by continuing to read this? Was I so bored by the ABC arch that I had seen played out in hundreds, probably thousands of movies and books in my lifetime? I knew how it was going to end, and that to me had become uninteresting. I wanted to know what happened after the final page was turned. When the credits rolled and the curtain closed. Do they really live happily ever after? The love department to me is a bridge in the gap between what we know of love and what we think we know of it, and what it really is. On a plane recently, I was watching the movie Past Lives, written and directed by Celine Song. I was really struck by the story and its direction. First, let me say that the acting performances were all top-notch and the writing felt very earnest. I won't spoil the film for you, but I'll summarize a bit. Nora is a young woman whose family immigrated from Korea when she was just a child, and she has this connection with Hei Sung. At the time, he's just a boy in her class that she competes with academically. And their little crush seems innocent, it seems sweet, and reminds you of maybe your first crush. As the movie unfolds, there's these layers of time that seem almost quotidian or commonplace. But you notice the characters growing into themselves as individuals while still being tethered to each other in this inexplicable way. In Korean, it's called inyun, Nora says. It means providence or fate. But it's specifically about relationships between people. Nora says she thinks it comes from Buddhism or reincarnation. It's an inun if two people even walk by each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush. Because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it's because there have been 8,000 layers of inyon over 8,000 lifetimes. That last part is a direct pull from the film there, uh, where she's talking to Well, do yourself a favor, watch the movie. It is nominated for Best Picture at the Oscar this year. I think it's gonna win. But 8,000 lifetimes? I can barely remember last year, and there were lots of significant moments for me. I moved in with my partner for one, and I remember how long and arduous the process was. I remember living at hotels together, out of suitcases, while we waited ages to be approved for our building. I remember finally moving in on the day that his brother and sister-in-law were coming to visit, and how we scrambled to get the apartment set up for them and their one-year-old. I remember drinking champagne and eating pizza and slices together amongst all of our combined stuff. That day, I remember clearly. But 8,000 layers, lifetimes. Who can say? I would say I agree that some beings come into being as though they have already been here. Maybe that's because I was a child that was much older than my chronological age. This movie made me wonder about the relationships we have had and will have, and if maybe some of those were from that previous lifetime. And can they possibly carry through to our next ones? What I think the film does beautifully is capture the eternal nature of love. It is unlike any other human emotion in that way. I mean, if I'm sad, there will always be another time where I'm happy again, right? And in that way, it makes me question if love is merely an emotion at all. I'd like to believe that love is the only force capable of traversing a thousand plus years of metaphysical reality. And if so, that might make love as real as gravity. Newton's law of gravity, as defined by NASA, aka the researchers of time and space, or substance matter is thousands of years old. NASA says that gravity is any particle of matter in the universe, attracting any other particle of matter with a force varying directly as the product of the masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them. In other words, it's the thing that pulls two objects together. And so, if we were to apply the same language to the laws of attraction, that there is a universal pull of each mass towards each other, the same force that causes an apple to fall towards the ground, the same force that causes the moon to orbit the earth and not fall, or the earth to float off into space towards the sun. That same force could be described as love. I think another reason why I wanted to create this podcast is because it felt like in my own relationships that I was kind of making it up as we went along. On some level, I understand that we all are in this life, but I was kind of hoping that there would be certain givens or teachers or insight into love. Instead, love has been a figure it out as you go kind of journey. My definitions and practices of it become like a quilt of experiences, some good, some not, and a lot of incomplete interpretations of instances that I thought I was witnessing love. As Bell Hooks would say, we are not born knowing how to love. And so then who is here to teach us? Who will pull back the covers, crack open their love lives, the lessons, the growing pains, the joyous highs, the wrenching lows. I figured if I wanted to hear these stories, then maybe you did too. And if you're really out there on the internet, then the love department is for you. But it is also for those of you who feel like love has been nothing but a heartache. That gravity which has sent you propelling towards another person didn't come with any breaks. I hope that by hearing these stories from couples, you don't feel jealous or put off by their journey. On the contrary, I hope that their love is a healing balm to your aching heart, that the part of you that longs to remember love can feel through the airwaves that love is out there. And as we said in the beginning, love looks differently every time it presents itself. I encourage you to look for that little pull of gravity in your everyday life. Maybe it's your kids, maybe it's your job or a pet or a hobby, but something bigger calls you still and it's pulling you to love deeper. Whatever it is that brought you to this podcast, whether you believe in providence or fate, whether you know me personally and you're just coming to support, or maybe you came here looking for a more thorough review of the movie Past Lives. I want you to know that each time you tune into this show, it is special to me that this space that I've wanted to create for so long, not just for myself, but for these couples, to share openly and honestly about the part of their lives that has been the best part. The part that has taught them so much. I'm so grateful for the couples on the show that come to share that gift of love with us, so that we might learn something too. The Love Department is produced in Brooklyn, New York. It is created and hosted by Nick Lockhart. Special thank you to Sound Engineer Bree Seeley and Karen Minto for all their help on our episodes this season. A continued thank you to all the couples from season one for your vulnerability, your truth, and your willingness to share on this platform is not something I take lightly. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And hey, listener, if you're still here, keep in touch with us by visiting our website. You can visit our website at www.love-department.com. You can leave us a message on the Heartline and tell us how it's going in your love department. We'd love to hear from you. You can also join our community on SubSnack for more written content from me. I'm learning a lot lately about my personal relationships, and this is the place where I will share more of that. As I'm sure you'll hear me say at the close of every episode, be sure that you're following us and subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. And if you love us, and only if you love us, we love to read positive reviews. It helps us keep making more content that matters when we know it matters to YouTube. Your encouragement is so appreciated. And that's it. That's my first solo episode. You've been listening to the love department. This is your chief love officer speaking. And I wish you love.