Love Ain’t Enough
Half-frozen fruit juice on a hot summer day. The 2022 Golden State Warriors. My Dad. The truck I’ve been driving for over twenty years. Feeling sore after hard exercise. Three-day weekends. Derek Trucks’ guitar tone. Redemption. Sex. Catching falling items before they hit the floor. Laughing hard. Being respected for a job well done. Syncopated rhythms. Anticipation of excitement. Riding waves. I love all of these.
What is love? Haddaway repeatedly asked this question in his early 90’s Euro dance hit, “What Is Love.” What was the reply?
Oh baby, don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt me
No more
Fair enough. I’ll accept that. Sounds like love, or a type of love anyway. As the listener, even after a close examination of the entire song (go ahead, I dare you), you’re left on your own to pin down what type of love Haddaway is talking about. Sounds like romantic love to me, unrequited love most likely. But it could be a song about cheating, or perhaps about an ongoing abusive relationship, with domestic violence implications. Who the hell knows? Haddaway doesn’t want you to get lost in the details, he wants you to dance your ass off.
It is not surprising that Haddaway did not provide a definitive answer to what love is because there is no definitive answer. It’s safe to say there is no more overused, poorly defined, misinterpreted word in the English language than love. The word “like” has been overused in America, and by extension the English-speaking world trying to sound American, for decades. But “like” is often like, pure filler, you know? “Love” is usually intended to mean something. Love could just be one step up from like (the meaningful, non-filler like). Or love could mean an eternal deep understanding. Love could imply long term commitment. Love could imply short term desire. Love could be used to describe God’s relationship with humankind, or the relationship between that shirtless overweight guy with his face painted green and the Philadelphia Eagles.
It is famously said that Inuit people have fifty words for snow. This is not technically correct. According to the interwebs, there are three basic root words for snow that the Inuit use, but there are lots of other words that the Inuit add as modifiers, for example to differentiate snow-drift snow from falling snow. It seems like we could use a few more modifiers for love. Dad love, truck love, God love, sex love... these are fundamentally different things, yes? I’m no neuroscientist, but I believe experiments have been conducted recording brain activity to determine how the brain differentiates between various kinds of love. Assuming the brain does differentiate, great, but that still doesn’t help everyday communication because we’re not walking around showing one another real time brain scans (not yet anyway). In English, we’re still using the same damn word in a million different contexts. Sometimes the word is disposable. Sometimes the word is the most meaningful word in the most important relationship conversation of your life. Same word.
John Lennon once wrote a song called “All You Need Is Love.” In 1967, during the Summer of Love, a Beatles performance of “All You Need Is Love” was broadcast around the world on television to 400 million people in 25 countries. The song and the televised performance of the song probably had a positive impact on humanity but personally I’m of the opinion “All You Need Is Love” is a bad song, for a few reasons. The first reason is that the song is naïve. The kind of love Lennon is talking about is love for all of humanity, and the sentiment is if we all just had enough love than we’d be living in utopia. This is incorrect, because we need more than love to form a utopia.
According to Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, we need love, but we also need safety and food and water first. Not all psychologists agree with Maslow, but most everyone agrees that humans do need food and water. Perhaps Maslow’s pyramid is improperly ordered, and love should be at the bottom, because it seems like a lack of love is causing people to die of starvation if there’s enough food and water to go round, and presently there is enough food and water to go round. Maybe Lennon had thought this through, and that’s what he was saying, that a heavy dose of love would solve all our real-world dilemmas? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think Lennon was being overly simplistic.
The verses of Lennon’s song are full of simple a priori statements:
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
No kidding. Logic 101.
There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be
Well, that’s just factually incorrect John. There are a whole lot of places I am not meant to be, for various reasons. Randomly pick a place anywhere on this planet and I can assure you, it is extremely unlikely I’m meant to be there. My boss could confirm this fact at 8:00 AM tomorrow.
I get what Lennon is saying, and we could certainly use more love. It’s a nice idea that if we had enough love and shared it around, we would have everything we need, but it’s simply not true. “War is over if you want it”? Naïve, but factually correct. If everyone bought into the idea that war is over, war is over. Now. “All you need is love”? Tell that to folks that don’t have enough to eat.
It's not just the multiple fallacies of reasoning that make “All You Need Is Love” a mediocre song, it’s the music as well. Despite the song’s numerous subtle time signature changes, it plods along like a snail trying to finish a marathon. Some of this plodding is attributable to the horn section, who sound drunk. If you’re going to perform a song with an affirmative message channeling the feeling of the magical time on the planet for 400 million people in 25 countries, you’d think you’d be a little more upbeat about it.
I didn’t come here to pick on the Beatles though; I came to praise the Barr Brothers, and their song “Love Ain’t Enough,” a song about how love is enough. It turns out that love is enough. I realize “love is all you need” and “love is enough” sound like similar ideas, but these two song refrains refer to different kinds of love. The “All You Need Is Love” type of love is a vague, generic love. The kind of love expressed through “thoughts and prayers,” or even worse, “vibes.” Sending you vibes bro. Yuck. The love in “Love Ain’t Enough” is specific, individual, committed, supportive, stable, enduring love. At the end of the day, at the end of all the days, it turns out this kind of love is enough. Not necessarily enough to keep going, because at some point we’re not going to keep going, but enough to provide some comfort. You can’t build a utopia with this love, but you can find peace.
“Love Ain’t Enough” is a better song than “All You Need Is Love” in part because the performance is better. This SOTW live performance was recorded for KEXP in Seattle and was never going to be seen by 400 million people, given that KEXP is a radio station, and the performance was ostensibly for a live radio broadcast. However, KEXP has been kind and savvy enough to record live performances in their studio, with absurdly good video and sound quality, and distribute these performances online. The Barr Brothers knew they were being recorded by this hipster mecca, and played with cohesion, clarity, and passion.
The intro to “Love Ain’t Enough” is actually its own song on the Barr Brothers 2014 release Sleeping Operator, where it is titled “Static Orphans.” It’s just an intro though. The intro performed at KEXP is great, even with Brad accidentally hitting the mic stand and Andrew playing a slightly out of tune banjo, giving the piece an African feel. Andrew later plays an in-tune bike wheel. And yes, that’s a floating piece of sewing thread Brad is playing. Watch the full set posted by KEXP online (on YouTube) for further details about playing sewing thread if you’re curious.
For those unfamiliar with the Barr Brothers, Brad Barr (guitar) and Andrew Barr (drums) had previously performed in a Boston-based trio called The Slip, with a focus on jazz rock improvisation. Though I sometimes miss The Slip’s jamming, I think Brad Barr’s songwriting demonstrates growth and maturity. After moving to Montreal in 2006, Brad serendipitously heard his new neighbor, Sarah Pagé, playing the harp through the apartment wall. Sarah, Brad and Andrew formed a trio under the name Barr Brothers. Pagé left the band in 2018 and was replaced by a new harpist, Eveline Gregoire-Rousseau. The fact that the band decided to replace Pagé with another harpist speaks highly of the importance Pagé had to the overall sound of the band.
A quick note regarding stripping paint… To get to the true beauty of what’s hidden underneath, you may need to strip off multiple layers. You might think there’s only one layer, but that is rarely the case. Luckily, many paint strippers are designed to strip off multiple layers with a single application. I’ve seen some products advertised as being able to strip up to seven layers. That might seem like a lot, but honestly once you start stripping you may find that after stripping several layers, you’ve still barely scratched the surface. Good news is you can just keep going, and eventually you will get there. Bad news is this may take some time and effort. Some products advertise they can work in only 15 minutes. If you’ve got multiple layers, I’d be shocked if you managed to get through all of them in only 15 minutes. It may take several days. Or weeks. Or years. That’s OK. Patience and effort, and you’ll get there. What you’ll find underneath will not disappoint you, I guarantee it.
8.31.22