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This song by the Eagles (it’s old, I know) is about a man who knows his woman is cheating on him even though she’s lying. The listener gets the sense that he just wishes he didn’t know and that not knowing would make everything okay.

In Symposium, Aristophanes talks about how people used to be giants circles until Zeus decided to split each circle in half into two separate beings. Aristophanes claims that people are on an eternal hunt for their other half because it completes them and the halves can balance each other out. In his song Make Me Better, Fabolous claims that his girl is his other half because she makes him a better person. His girl takes him up to the next level because she is his other half.

The song is about a boy and girl who grow up and play together. When they are teenagers they realize that they love each other. “Well, I was sixteen when suddenly I wasn’t that little girl you used to see.” “I dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried” reminds me of Daphnis and Chloe’s first kiss. Like Daphnis and Chloe, the song has a lot of pastoral elements such as them looking at the stars, being by the creek beds, and being in the tree house.

In Homer’s the Odyssey, Odysseus embarks on an epic journey from the Trojan War to return home to Ithaka to see his wife Penelope. He is gone for many years, and he encounters many people, dangers, and eventful situations along the way. Alas, nothing can stop him from returning to be with his beloved wife. In “Melissa,” an unnamed gypsy travels “from coast to coast” and wanders the earth, entwining himself with different people and is seemingly careless, but he is not complete without his love, Melissa.

Like the vows that both Daphnis and Chloe take to love eachother until their deaths, this song is for the artists lover who he promises he will love her with his whole self until the day he dies.

The song, like the poem, tells of a man who is devastated by love lost. He wishes he could have another chance at the love he once had, but the fact that it is over torments him.

Centrality of vision and gaze to desire.

The song ‘My Medea’ retells the story of Medea.

This may be a bit of a stretch, but I thought there was an interesting connection between these lyrics and the lack of speech from Penelope in book 23 because she was afraid that her words (or those of a false Odysseus) might decieve her. Both Homer and Jack Johnson draw the conclusion that sometimes arbitrary words are inadequate in searching for the visible.

“I don’t kiss the guy who guzzles wine beside the brimming bowl and talks battles and tearful war, but the one who mingles dazzling gifts of the Muses and Aphrodite singing of lusty play.” In both the ancient and modern lyric, the women would rather have ‘exciting’ men who can impress them, rather then men who only think of themselves. In the ancient text the woman is displeased by the men who only talk about war (which interests them). In the TLC lyric, the women don’t want a guy who is “broke” and can’t associate with goddesses.

The artist describes falling in love upon first site as though he is hit with the emotion. This parallels Medea’s being hit with cupid’s arrow and falling in love with Jason upon first site.

The common theme here is that love will lift you high, to the stars. In Book 3 of the Argonautica, Medea is initially “rooted to the ground” (964) when she first sees Jason. Directly after their meeting, however, her mind soared to the clouds(1151). It is as though the love she feels for Jason has lifted her, flushed with emotion, into the sky.

Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry Inch directly pulls from Aristophanes speech in the Symposium, referencing how the love of our life is the other half of our person. The person we fall completely in love with is the other half of our soul.

There is a parallel between this song with that of Catullus’ poetry because these artists are singing about a woman who comes and leaves to other men as she wishes. The woman in this song acts similarly to the domina Lesbia in Catullus’ Roman love elegy.