Hedwig and the Angry Inch-The Origin of Love
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The Origin of Love
"
The Origin of Love" is a song from the stage show
Hedwig and the Angry Inch and subsequent
film written by
John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask. Stephen Trask wrote the song, which is based on a story from
Plato's
Symposium.
Origins
In the
Symposium, a party is being held in which a series of speeches are given paying homage to
Eros, the
Greek god of love. "The Origin of Love" is taken from the speech given by the playwright
Aristophanes.
According to the speech, long ago,
humans were composed of two people stuck back-to-back, with two faces and eight limbs. Male-male humans came from the
Sun, female-female humans from the
Earth and male-female humans from the
Moon. The gods, out of jealousy, split them in half. Now, throughout our lives, we are always trying to find our "other half", and
sexual intercourse is the only means we have to put the two halves back together; this desire to be one person again is what we call "
love". However, it is impossible to fully rejoin two people because it is our
souls and not our
bodies that most desire to be reunited.