As Dante and Virgil entered the 2nd circle of hell, they were welcomed by a flame or something eerily resembling it, standing surprisingly strong against the treacherous gusts of wind that reigned the sphere of Lust, flinging around deathless souls of infidels. Thrown together as one, were the souls of Francesca and Paulo, intertwined like an inferno in itself, their bare skin shining against the black of hell akin to aureate in placer soils. Dante, for one, was empathetic, empathetic to a pain that did not seem to exist. In fathoming this, my mind fast-forwards to a 33-year-old Irish gentleman speaking for Paulo, "Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I." A love that centers on the classical dilemma of primeval passion and societal morality. Talks of heaven, which with all its glory is just not capable of understanding a passion so deep, it makes the agony of hell seem like a child's play, and a God so flawed that his benevolence shatters in the face of a plebian mortal love. The comprehension of superiority between the divine and mortal love is a discourse both straightforward and impossibly complicated, how does one be to receive both heaven and love? is beloved not heaven in themselves? does heaven feel like heaven without them? is hell hell if our dearest is there with us? and what can heaven possibly offer that one cannot receive clenched in the arms of their beloved?

If inside such a nail-ripping storm one sees Francesca and Paulo clinging together like flesh and leech, stab wounds adorning their body, one is forced to ponder, what love is if not choosing damnation over separation. These hurricanes will never be able to shake the love out of them, lowly mortals who have only one devotion. It's hard to imagine a god who is jealous of being secondarily loved, so much so that it towers his omnibenevolence. I feel a strange glee in picturing them as unapologetic and unrepenting, happy even, to spend eternity as one, does God realize it too? For all his erudite, he must know that it is far from a curse to these star-crossed lovers, so, did he do it purposely? God's ways are unfathomable to us mere mortals, but I will be playing the devil's advocate today. I like to imagine them as two rebellious souls who would do it all over again, who would be ready to endure hells a thousand times hostile for just a loving gaze, who would choose each other in every world and beyond, over and over again.

I am askew to blasphemy (which is fairly obvious by now), if not, will surely be so by the end of it. Elucidating on Andrew Hozier-Byrne, allow me to create in your mind the picture of a shrike, a genus of passerine birds in the shrike family ‘Laniidae’, found in parts of Eurasia, Africa, and North America, but that is not important, what fascinates me is the lack of talons on this carnivorous bird and how it makes up for it, a typical shrike just catches its prey, its death is wrought about by a bush, a thorny bush which it uses to stab its prey to death and then devour it. What is love, if not a thorn which kills to nourish its beloved, or the bird whose existence revolves around the spicule, an altar of sacrifice, to the little shrike nothing is more divine than the malevolent barb, no love can be thicker than the drops of blood oozing down the pulpit of survival. Love and gore are as inseparable as the North Sea and a consuming sense of impending doom. A gentle love is the haven of cowards, a love born from vehemence is what intimidates the gods. A love that rejuvenates from immolation and a devotion demanding more than just hollow recitations. A kind of love that transcends his holiness and makes life out of death, pleasure of misery, and fidelity out of profanity.

In another one of his very famous works, Hozier talks about how every Sunday at the Church is turning ‘more bleak’ (grammatically inaccurate words are rarely so beautiful, aren’t they?) as he has set out on the quest for a new devotion, regretting not worshipping her sooner, in doing so he recounts all religiosity and sanctity as meaner than the dust at the soles of his beloved. The parallel of love and blasphemy being two sides of the same coin is drawn here as he believes that if the heavens did have a voice, she would be the one and only interpreter of the same (and I believed I was the apostate!). For a lover is a fighter, and the fight against God, is by far the easiest one to win, Hozier here, is indistinguishable from Francesca as he shows no hint of remorse, he even goes to the extent of challenging god's agents to drag him to Church where he will sit and confess to everything he feels and would love to get under his knife for the very original sin. What is God if not an altar of lies placed before us as something pious, what is religion, if not an instrument of oppression, a tool of making people's conscience weaker by every generation subscribing to the idea of a surreal being who has no other job than to ensure the sky is clear on my hamster's birthday?

This entity who puts people into limbo for not accepting him as their "father" sits idly by while a whole population is horrendously murdered in his creation for not having blue eyes, what good is such a father? what utility do we have of such a guardian? In my very humble opinion, God owes a huge apology to the entire human race, if not a punishment, for that matter.

Too much love? Let's talk about war now, this is a place where Hozier appears to agree with Dante, the third circle of hell talks about gluttony through the metaphor of a three-headed dog from Greek mythology. Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld, the ever-hungry ogre that feasts on souls trespassing the realm of Hades, ravaging the souls of the hedonistic over and over and over again.

Hozier, in his song, ‘Eat Your Young’ talks about seven ‘new ways’, referring to the seven deadly sins, portraying them as a way one can eat their young where ‘young’ is a clear metaphor for the future. He talks about how humans, to satisfy their worldly over-indulgence are ready to give up their posterity. The barbaric metaphor of a couple worried about how to get food on the table, coming up with the idea of eating their young as a quicker and easier method, the analogy of ‘dinner’, perspicuously portrays priorities of indulgence over sustenance. Delving into a fierce competition between human species to get their hands on whatever exists in the world, any scope of profit or collateral benefit should not be left unexploited, and doing so at the expense of our children is the inevitable injury, but whose prick can surely be subdued by a sumptuous meal. And if one, for a motive even as cruel as selfish entertainment (like me of course), looks at it from an objective perspective, notices a hint of it in the class struggle. The scarcely subtle phrase ‘Throw enough rope until the legs have swung’ shows the suicidal nature of such indulgence and how just the bare minimum is given to the proletariat to get them hooked on to their shallow promises and benevolence which all ends in ruin. It goes on to recount how this facade of support is snatched away from this class without remorse as soon as a crisis hits, it's like the world is a big pool table where bourgeoise-faced cues hit proletariat spheres which are targeted, struck, and reassembled at whims and if the game gets ugly, the invisible hand just dusts itself and leaves. In this big experimental lab of a world, no heed is given to the rat's concerns as they are investments to make the world more peaceful, as blood has to precede the dove at all costs. This situation is made all the graver in a capitalist culture where money is an apposite of survival. The celebration of calculation as rationality and empathy as ignorance are the gopurams for a sanctum of corruption and suffering. In the end, even if one inch of the earth remains, we will not stop, even a single penny is left, it will be eaten all the same, the dining table is open to all but accessible to none as food cannot demand to be fed, slaughter pigs need to be kept in a delusion of a benevolent master, as contempt is believed to spoil the taste. And who would like a bitter slice of pork after a long day of making the world a better place?

My obsession with Dante and Hozier, however, pales in comparison to that with the paradoxes of morality and the ways our omnipotent god fails us. Our understanding of sin is so parochial, that in its view we fail to notice the flaws of the system, how in teaching ourselves and others the rule, we fail to see the elaborate joke being played on us. The notions of how and why people sin, how these sins are interpreted by religion and society, and how the idea of such a god that torments the most primeval motivations of humans is fallacious. I hereby argue that love is the only proper manifestation of devotion in the material world and the defined transgressions are merely chains for people that stop them from being humans in the true sense, lovers and their passions defy every rule of the sacred book and are thus the most untouchable and pious of the lot, they know god, they know love, they know pain, and they know how to fight for a pain they rightfully have claim over.

And just as God, in whatever he does, and whatever atrocities he commits on his children, the lies of his omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience are defined as a part of a larger, nobler ‘plan’, the flaws of a lover can be overlooked when one drowns in their devotion. How valid is a love (of God) so hell-bent on separating us from the love we have the security of experiencing and reciprocating? How is a man's love for another inferior to his love for God, or is it just a way to achieve divine love in the long run…?

If there is an afterlife, we must not be scared of it, in my understanding, if you are brave enough to live your life on your apostles then no world would be more difficult to thrive in than the earth as there is supposedly only one Satan in hell, and that's 8 billion times less!

I would like to end this nasty advent with a line from Pessoa that says," I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social center, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlors, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colors and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting." If only the songs we compose while waiting for the inevitable belong to us in the real sense, might as well give the social center an issue of deliberation and immortalize ourselves at this inn called Life.

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