But does some spark of longing for a more beautiful, intact world survive?
The democratic revolution of aspiration De Tocqueville witnessed in the early 19th century swept across the world, sparking longings for wealth, status and power in the most unpromising circumstances.
He gets inside people, and he festers there, sparking longings too intense and elusive to satisfy, desires too abstract and ethereal to fulfil, a sense of escape, transcendence, revelation, and ecstasy so deep it can seem to trivialise ordinary life, and thus trivialise whoever has to live that life, which is to say anyone.
Longing for retribution is longing for retribution.
Finally, the "work" of Lord Elgin on the Parthenon at the beginning of the 19th century had sparked further longing for Greece: it now seemed possible to build vast collections of ancient art in Western Europe.
We never saw them in bed together (and we were privy to only one meaningful kiss), but Mulder and Scully were clearly soul mates, throwing sparks from the tiniest hints of longing.
Those of us who are passionate about the foods of Szechuan, Hunan, Yunnan, Shanghai, Suzhou, Fukien, Canton and Beijing — and who are old enough — can't help longing for the palate-sparking wonders revealed to us from the mid-'60s through the '70s, as expensive, stylish Chinese restaurants opened to feature what were billed as northern foods.
Rap-Up said that the song shows Brown "taking baby steps back to love and into the spotlight," and said that it found Brown "longing to mend a broken relationship" as in his 2008 Jordin Sparks collaboration, "No Air".
Libraries generate longing.
