You'll Love This

An Essay (1)

Ever since my friend Bertie declared that he “loved tomato sauce” I’ve been averse to both tomato sauce and the concept of love. At the time, we were sitting under my kitchen table with Susan, my beagle, squeezing illegally gained tomato sauce onto slices of white bread and eating them voraciously, all three of us. I’m rarely generous or likely to indulge in a drop of tomato sauce today, we truly over-ate. This is contrary to my post-Brexit habit of embarrassing large portions of mayonnaise with most things because it makes me feel European. 

On the topic of love as a human experience, remember that thing we would say to a new beloved in our youth?

“No. You say it first. No, you.”

A timeless scenario that announces co-dependency from the outset. 

Popular music is most guilty of exploiting the concept of love, and all of the mainstream media, literature, and art if I’m going to roll with the massive general statements - in music critic style. Growing up, songs like Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walking gave me a whole new perspective on love, and also wearing boots with mini skirts, or hot pants, a popular combo back then: they weren’t just for posing in front of Hi-Fi equipment, or motorcars for sale, you could walk away from danger in them, stomp and march even. Noted. I very much liked marching. Helen Reddy’s chorus to I Am Woman - and her poncho and trousers - had me roaring like a lioness at my dad, and claiming “I’m in numbers too big to ignore” (myself, Mr. Ted, Doris the Doll, and my partner in crime, the pet dog.) Music and love had me off to a good start, but as a young woman living in London, UK, women were only the accessories to my favourite pop music, like Pepsi and Shirli of WHAM and Annabella Lwin of BOW WOW WOW, (recruited at 13 by Malcolm Mclaren post-punk). The only stars doing any confident striding were Grace Jones and WHAM’s George Michael.

I turned to vintage records. For a while, I believed the songs represented the formidable women who sang them and were a more realistic framework for the female experience. Later in academia, I was introduced to the feminist Judith Butler’s - representation of the feminine as a construct, not natural. More recently, the academic, musician, producer, artist, and author, Helen Reddington, as a build-up to the introduction of her concept of Gender Ventriloquism reminded us that Judith Butler argued that Aretha’s 1967  recording of the track Natural Woman is “... a male-constructed fantasy.

The music was written by Carole King, lyrics by Gerry Goffin, and the title was suggested by Jerry Wexler. Butler sees the artificiality of the way that the track was created as an inauthentic attempt to control perceptions of womanhood.” Take it even further: a white production team reminds Reddington.

Before I got myself an education though - and why should I have to understand prejudice and sexism to be prepared like a good Girl Scout - eventually even the pull of the magnificence of singers like Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Julie London, and Aretha Franklin could not stop me from getting bored with the topic of love in every song: you make me feel like a natural woman - whatever that is; I feel for you; he loves me and I love him (even though he’s a wastrel);  I love him and he doesn’t love me and my life is over; he loves me but I can’t love him (cos he’s married, or I’m married, or we’re both married); where is he? Why is he like that, I’m sure it’s my fault. I’m waiting for my love; all scenarios that are the tip of the top of the pops iceberg. I was heterosexual but these songs still weren’t speaking to me.

And then there’s this confusion with love, an abstract, and sex, a biological drive in both our fantasy cultural worlds and our real ones.  “It’s better if you love them,”. “Make love not war,” they said in the 60s. 

So overused is our one word, that it has lost its root meaning. Overall, I get the impression most uses of the word come from no pre-thought whatsoever, like the way people say “Yes” to things when they don’t mean it; especially yes to doing things. It is much harder to say “No” or “Yes but I can’t promise…” My moral compass believes this shows respect: fully acknowledge the query don’t wave it away like its outcome is insignificant; and don’t agree with people for the sake of an easy life. Hell, that annoys people; at least the ones close to me, which brings me back to the topic of love. 

The Internet says Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three. To solve this dilemma of lack of nuance in some of our word choices I’ve got into the habit of turning nouns or those flighty things, adjectives, into verbs. This started with discovering the musicologist and theorist and musicologist Christopher Small’s concept of Musicking. I can’t stop, it’s a hobby, like the cryptic crossword, or Wordle, or golf, or being in a political punk band. Acts of love, not loving, make more sense, charity, compassion, and empathy in everyday living are obvious ways to do this but I want to give a call out to saying uncomfortable but necessary things to those you care about as love, where I started: “No son, no more fizzy drinks for you, you’ll be climbing the walls.” “Here’s a coffee now get up!” “Of course I love you but I love me more and I won’t jump off that metaphorical cliff, thanks.” “Don’t cross the road without looking left, then right, then left again.” “Is that your trainers or your socks that stink, dear? Poor You!” “Cheese is like heroin, pass it on.” “If you eat too many of those tomato sauce sandwiches you’re going to be sick. And if you’re sick of condiments you’re sick of life.”

References

Reddington, H. (2021) She’s At The Controls: Sound Engineering, Production, and Gender Ventriloquism in the 21st Century, pgs. 120, 122, 125, UK: Equinox

Small, C. (1998), Musicking, pgs. 1 - 17, University Press of New England

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