Where Did Our Love Go? And My Hair?

On Tuesday after school I stopped by my barber to get my mane cut back. As I wrote last week, I let my hair grow long and the beard get scruffy so I wouldn't look as much like a mark out in Detroit.

I have written about my barber before. Walking into the shop, it is a step back in time. There is a fading picture of pitcher Bruce Sutter on the wall (a Columbia boy who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals three decades ago). The decor and furniture look decidedly ancient. The radio plays oldies. My barber has been cutting hair professionally before I was born.  He specializes in annihilating bushy eyebrows.

As I settled down for my shearing, a Four Tops song came up on the radio. I went with the vibe and let my barber give me a crew cut. I was expecting Archie and Jughead to come in the shop for a trim before meeting the girls Veronica and Betty for chocolate malts at Hinkle's (an old school local restaurant that recently put in a retro soda fountain).  I had tried to elucidate to my barber that I didn't want as much off the top but I think it is in his DNA to mow down hair. So, I just took it like a man.

The way I look at it, the cut is not what I wanted. But, it will grow back. In the meantime, I save some money as I won't go back as soon. As the Four Tops song played in the background, a typical tune of boy meet girl or unrequited love or love gone wrong, I reflected on Motown.

As a music company, it cranked out hit after hit in the 1960's in particular following the formula of boy/girl love or at least lust and longing. The music was upbeat, the lyrics simple but also often sad, and it had hooks. The songs speak of a more innocent time. It made a lot of male/female love. Too much. In the songs, I hear too much emphasis on the girl or boy being the sole object of affection. Which I think inevitably creates disaffection.

While the Church has made too little of romantic love, like seeing the Song of Solomon about being about Christ and His Church which is really a Gnostic stretch, it is instead a love story between a man and a woman. I think Solomon wrote it as a retrospective of the beauty and innocence of young love, including sex, long after he had despoiled himself by his supra-serial-sexual misconduct. Sex addict indeed. Want to ruin something? Indulge it.

You have to give it to man like Solomon who had it all...power, sex, and money, and admits that it was not enough to fill his restless heart. St Augustine, who had his own battle with lust, said something to the effect that "Our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee."