So I recently attended the Further Future Festival, where for a 15-hour period of time, I felt less like an individuation, less like a fraction of humanity, and more like a conscious contributor to the whole: to the community of free-thinkers, futurists, and oneironauts that surrounded me.

I felt like an optic nerve, perceiving others’ experiences through some newly acquired metaphysical sense.

There was this one point where I stood there, under the light of a hazy Taurus Moon, and I watched these two lost star children find each other amidst this larger steampunk-inspired techno-Terran collective. I wondered, “How long have these souls been searching for each other? How long have they been searching for that amorous transcendence that alleviates their existential angst and grants them momentary immortality?”

I feel like we hear people wax philosophic about love, immortality, and death. They say “Love is the romantic solution to the problem of death.” That love is an escape from death. Through the power of love, we can say proudly: my existence on earth has been validated: While I was here, I mattered, because I mattered to somebody. As Dean Martin sings, “you’re nobody til somebody loves you. You’re nobody til somebody cares…” Love, then, is a way of escaping the existential panic that one day your meat-suit will be vanquished, and all will be for nothing.

But I think that we have to look at love as something much greater than a form of fantasy-filled escapism, because at some level, love is death and rebirth. Love is the death of who you thought you were, and the renaissance of who you will become. Love is a rabbit hole, it’s the awakening to a hidden dimension. Love is the proof that something exists beyond what you imagined possible. Love is the emotional manifestation of our communion with the divine. It’s the promise of life after death.