The Echo of Absence

Dear Wanderer,

𝄆 Moderato 𝄇

Tragic love strikes differently than joy ever could. Happiness resolves into harmony, but heartbreak leaves a dissonance that never fades. It is like a chord struck in the wrong key—its vibration lingers, trembling in the air long after the fingers have lifted from the keys. It shatters not only our peace, but our very dreams and expectations. And yet, we return to it. Is pain addictive? Perhaps it is. In the hollow left by absence, we hear an echo—yearning, anticipation, and the unbearable ache of what might have been.

Tragic love draws us in like a cruel mirror. We do not seek rest in it, but intensity. We already know that Romeo and Juliet will die, that Cyrano will fall silent, that fate waits for Achilles; and yet we turn the pages feverishly. It is as if failure contains a truth sharper than fulfillment. Perhaps because failure leaves a void, and that void resonates like a chamber of echoes.

And it is precisely this void that haunts us. In Normal People, Marianne and Connell do not die like ancient heroes; their tragedy is daily life, marked by silences falling like suspended pauses in a score. It is a modern tragedy of “almost” and “maybe,” of notes cut short. In Magnolia Parks, the wound does not come from fate but from themselves: pain becomes a refrain, a toxic melody repeated endlessly. Here we realize tragic love is not always imposed; sometimes it is a music we choose to play, even when it tears us apart.

𝄆 Adagio — Variations on the Echo 𝄇

Romeo and Juliet are the archetype: their passion explodes like fireworks, a fortissimo too sudden, vanishing into silence. What stays is not the blaze, but the unresolved chord that follows. We cannot help but ask: what if they had lived? What if love had endured the ordinary? Perhaps we prefer them dead, preserved in eternal resonance, rather than alive and subject to dissonance.

If We Were Villains shows us young actors living Shakespeare until they lose themselves. Their lives become tragedies staged without curtains. Pain becomes a leitmotif: hidden love, stifled words. That silence resonates like a suspended note, vibrating in the air without resolution.

Cyrano de Bergerac: a man who possesses all the words, yet not the courage to pronounce them when it matters most. His life is a broken symphony, the main melody never declared. His tragedy is not a lack of love, but silence where music demanded explosion. That silence is sharper than any cry.

And then Call Me by Your Name: a love blossoming in sunlight, a summer allegretto of laughter and desire, fading into a winter adagio of memory. Elio and Oliver’s story is not sealed by death but by time. What haunts us is not their union, but its brevity—the way memory becomes both treasure and wound. Elio by the fire, years later, repeats the same phrase softer and softer, until it is almost inaudible. The melody ends, but the echo never dies.

Memory’s cruelty is this: it gives the illusion of reliving, while reminding us relentlessly of what time has stolen. In Call Me by Your Name, absence becomes more real than presence. Oliver leaves, but his shadow remains. Love survives as an inner melody, always too vivid to fade.

And it is in memory that modern tragedy is born. Love is not destroyed by sword or poison, but by time extinguishing the music. Yet the wound continues to vibrate, like a plucked string that will not stop resonating.

𝄆 Allegro Appassionato 𝄇

Achilles and Patroclus remind us that some harmonies are forged in war. Their love, muted in Homer, becomes a full orchestral crescendo in Miller. Patroclus dies, Achilles follows, and yet their echo continues. Their ashes mingle like two themes finally resolving in the same key—too late, and therefore eternal.

Happy loves soothe us, like perfect cadences that close and reassure. But tragedies leave the phrase open. They refuse resolution. They continue to vibrate like an endless trill.

And perhaps that is why we return to them. Not because we love suffering itself, but because it leaves us a melody to chase. Happy stories fall into silence; tragedies remain suspended, an aria repeating in memory. It is those dissonances that remind us we have truly loved.

𝄆 Coda — Crescendo 𝄇

At first, only silence.
Then a murmur.
Then an echo.

Louder now.
Faster.
Insistent.

Absence.
Desire.
Memory.
Loss.

No rest.
No pause.

Faster.
Still faster.

Until all that remains—
The echo.

And yet… tell me, Wanderer—
are we drawn to tragic love because it destroys us,
or because it is the only kind of love
we believe can last forever?

de l’errant à l’errant,
Orlando