"Starry Night" by Isabel Gillies.(Photo: Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Isabel Gillies, author of Starry Night (comes out today!), remembers being "boy crazy" and falling in love for real and worries tech-focused kids today might not experience the same thing.
Isabel: I had run-ins with love before the big one — the falling in love — one. First of all the best game I ever played was House. As a little girl, I played House with the concentration of Roger Federer, using every molecule of my imagination, a 6-year-old Jane Austen. What would it be like to fall in love and have a family? There was never a face on my imaginary husband; there was just the fact of one. At age 9, it got refined; I slept with David Cassidy's record album under my pillow, whispering good night to him as I headed into my dreams. By sixth grade, it became clear to me that I was someone who felt exceedingly comfortable in the realm of romance. Love notes, holding hands, talking all night on the telephone, dancing to Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, all of it engulfed me and fascinated me, much more than anything else. People might have called it "boy crazy" or something diminishing and negative, but I think of it more as an interest in humanity. I got swept right up into love and its workings and stayed there right until this very morning as I write this.
All of "love light" I will call it, lowercase love, felt wonderful, but then at age 17, I fell in Love, and I thought that something was seriously the matter with me. I felt sick, overwhelmed, high, crazy, short of breath, bewildered, possessed, intense, stupefied and stopped short in my tracks. I fell in love with a boy who played the saxophone, obsessively read Dostoyevsky, and looked like an Allman brother. He had blond hair down to the middle of his back like I did. It was Romeo and Juliet Manhattan style.
The funny thing is that even though I had thought about almost nothing else besides love for all those years, when it really happened to me, I didn't know what it was. I remember clearly telling this Allman-brother-boy about what I was experiencing, like someone describing symptoms to a doctor.
"I feel so weird. Like, extremely happy, but also, frightened and everything is vivid, but I feel lost, and I kind of can't sleep — AT ALL, and I think about you constantly, so much I feel like crying right now, I feel out of control, but in control at the same time — I don't really know what's happening!"
He said, "We're in love, Isabel."
Once he named it, it was as if I had turned another color. Suddenly, after walking through life as a yellow person, I had turned blue and there was no going back. My mother recognized it in me and was glad. "Good," she said. "Now you know what it is."
I am thrilled there are scientists that study being in love, because it gives it legitimacy. There is a part of your brain that is designated for romantic feelings. There have been studies of it. Apparently this part of the brain lights up like a Lite-Brite when a person is in love. Had I known there were classes, I would have taken all of them and gotten a PhD. Had I thought about it, I would have become a couple's therapist because let's face it, couples therapy for adults is like advanced high school boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy stuff. I would love to sit in a room all day while couple after couple come into talk to me about their love.
I worry a little, or a lot, about kids these days (never thought I would say that in print, but there it is). Are they getting it the same way we did before the iPhone? My kid, even though I know in his heart, he would love to call his crush, says calling a girl is "stalker-ish and creepy." He is only 12, but that concerns me because I must have logged three years mooning on the phone with boys and it was amazing. My fear is that it's gone. That technology has finally gotten the best of us, and our beloved children who can't or won't speak to each other, will miss out on the most beautiful of processes. Falling in love for the first time involves intangible magic, but it also involves diligence, work, and effort. And it requires romance. How are these kids going to get into relationships if love-notes-on-real paper-that-you-can-keep-forever-in-a-box-in-your-closet (oh I have one) don't exist? Are texts the same? Maybe the heart and brain (it is a science, remember) will a dapt, and kids will be able to fall in love in a similar way to how we did. But do you think we need to sit them down to watch every movie John Hughes ever made to make sure they understand how it's supposed to go?
My worry is great, but not as great as my faith in love and the way young people tumble into it. Falling in love with each other is the best thing we people do. I don't believe there is an iPhone strong enough to stop the human heart and mind from joining, and with romance and a little bit of science, changing two people forever.
Here's the blurb about Starry Night:
Sometimes one night can change everything. On this particular night, Wren and her three best friends are attending a black-tie party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the opening of a major exhibit curated by her father. An enormous wind blasts through the city, making everyone feel that something unexpected and perhaps wonderful will happen. And for Wren, that something wonderful is Nolan. With his root-beer-brown Michelangelo eyes, Nolan changes the way Wren's heart beats. In Isabel Gillies's Starry Night, suddenly everything is different. Nothing makes sense except for this boy. What happens to your life when everything changes, even your heart? How much do you give up? How much do you keep?
Find out more about Isabel and her books at isabelgillies.com.
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