“…if you gotta ask,…”

Not a bad idea!

Someone once walked up to the legendary Louis Armstrong and ask him what jazz is.  Armstrong just looked at the questioner for a moment, not saying a word.  Then slowly broke into a broad smile and said, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.” 

It’s kind of like that with romance.  Oh, sure, you can try to explain it, break it down, discuss its individual elements, and attempt to figure out why it works.

But as with jazz, it clearly loses something in the telling.  Besides, if you don’t feel it, then it’s not really worth much anyway.

And that, of course, is the problem when trying to talk about romance.  It is a very personal subject.  Because romance is so visceral, and not something that can easily be qualified or intellectualized, everyone feels something different.  Everyone has a different concept of the subject.  The more people you ask, the more possibilities you seem to come up with.

Is your idea of romance escaping to a week at the beach?  Maybe it’s being tucked away in the mountains somewhere.  How about the perfect country inn buried deep in the heart of nowhere?  Or maybe you’re one of those lucky people for whom venue plays no role at all as long as you’re with someone special.

That, in the final analysis, is probably more to the point.  After all, romance, like luck, is where you find it.  There’s no guaranteed formula for success and no prescribed method for conducting a search. 

But having said all that, there are times when it’s nice to grease the machinery a little.  Times when it’s great fun to give nature and your feelings a nudge.  After all it’s summertime.  Stoke your soul just a bit and let the spirits soar. 

I have a slightly different view of romance to offer.  It’s one I came upon quite by accident when I was on the road alone. 

Eager to spend a week driving through Castile, but unable to convince friends to make the trip, I set out by myself.  The journey proved to be a revelation. 

Although it stigmatizes me, I admit I prefer a car to any other mode of transportation and I’ve always liked Spain partly because of the enormous scope it provides for dedicated motorists hooked on the exhilaration of high-speed driving.  I need no destination.  A lot has been said about cultural enrichment and the educational benefits of travel, but often it’s a joy just to be moving,  to be open to “the pleasures of merely circulating,” as Wallace Stevens put it.

I rented a car in Madrid, got directions to Toledo and set off on a series of highways that carried me past a Stonehenge of apartment buildings followed what has become characteristic the world over, landfills. 

Then, abruptly, I entered Spain, the real Spain, the classic Spain.  The light changed and the land spread out under an enormous sky the same iridescent shade as an oyster shell.  Some fields were black where corn stubble had been burned off.  Other fields were bright blazing red, like New England forests three feet tall.  These were vineyards whose leaves had turned. 

Overwhelmed by the majesty of the terrain, I failed to notice the direction.  I was thirty miles off course.  Finally I arrived at the hotel looking out toward Toledo-the same celebrated view that El Creco painted centuries ago-a tour group of Germans was tucking in a late lunch.  They looked like a friendly crew, but I decided against joining them.  I changed into walking shoes and drove into town, determined to see its art treasures and architectural monuments.

In the car, careening over the roads of Castile, I felt I had plenty of company.  The radio picked up stations from nearby Spanish towns, as well as from Portugal, France, Italy, and England, and with a twist of my wrist; I could convene what sounded like a quorum of United Nations debating the daily news.  I listened to flamenco, Aretha Franklin, and Miles Davis during a downpour in Albacete.  For hours, indescribable Arabic rhythms were broadcast from Casablanca, a fitting reminder that all the territory I traveled through had for many centuries been ruled by Muslims.

On my last night in Castille, I sat in the bar of the hotel, waiting for dinner, I reflected that it really was a shame that my friends hadn’t come along.  

This trip had been kids stuff on a grand scale – castles on every hilltop, hanging houses, swords and terrible machines of torture in Toledo, the Enchanted City, the Devil’s Window and the sun flowered landscape outside of Cuenca. 

Then it occurred to me that regardless of one’s age or sophistication, all journeys are essentially kid’s stuff, of the kind Cervantes wrote about when he sent his doughty knight sallying forth across the plains of La Mancha. 

All travel is an attempt to realize a romantic fantasy, and one succeeds to the extent that one is capable of becoming young again.  I remember Matisse once said he had worked his whole life to learn to paint like a child. 

It seems to me that when we travel we are trying to do the same-to learn to see as a child again, to make new discoveries and re-experience old ones, to forget whether we look or sound foolish, and to enjoy a respite from the rational exigencies of everyday life.  What could be more romantic?