false endings

'how can a thing so perfectly ended, continue?' is what Peter Barrett said in a spoken word intro to Love Is Not Enough, the Orchestra Luna song that made it onto the 1974 record (Epic). Peter complained: 'the Beatles say All You Need Is Love and you're telling me Love Is Not Enough? i don't get it.' i was thinking Bergman, not Lennon as in Through A Glass Darkly. a boy's sister is insane. 'why can't she get better, father, when all of us love her so much? when she is surrounded by our love?' but it was not enough. she was helicopter-ed to an asylum. nevertheless, Peter had a point. how can an ending continue? we get fed up, wrung out and quit on each another, on a job, on family, on ourselves. all the love in the world, prior to dissolution, fails until something unexpected happens. the pencil flips (eraser to lead) and scratches a new sketch. jumping out of a canoe in one direction sends it off in another. the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. nevertheless, when doors close we have a hard time imagining escape. it is not until we give up completely that we can be born anew, or so the cliche spins. and what about lovers who've thrown in the sweaty towel? 'she doesn't love me anymore. i can't take it. it's killing me! i'm fuckin' outa here!' crys the losing boy. 'he's a shithead. he's checking out my best friend. he's always 'confiding' in my fucking sister! i'm gonna throw up!' that's when the 'maybe we can still be friends' coin hops into the fountain and bubbles hope to the surface. 'i still love you. differently, ok?, but we understand each other too well to cast the baby out with the bath water. maybe there's a new way to be.' so whispers the cross-my-heart prayer. it is most often put forth by the losing half and seems unrealistic to the one who cares less. and it's a ploy to wrestle lost love back into the sheets. 'we'll talk. have coffee. learn to deal the 'new person, ok?' is the argument put forth to re-discover what had joined the two together in the first place. the big unsaid: 'we're not fucking right now but maybe we will again'. it's the fucking, isn't it, the sex. where did the attraction go? why did it stop? who were you thinking about when i wasn't around? who were you fantasizing when we were still together? who is sucking your cock, eating you out, driving you crazy with impossible pleasure? sexual jealousy, more than it's emotional cousin, voids the 'let's be friends' fantasy. unless one is, at long last, emotionally neutral or has that rare disinclination to be jealous, the ending is true and not false. it's over. let it go. let him go. let her jump out of the car and die. get over yourselves. i love false endings in music, getting fooled into thinking that the song is over and then it's not. it's easier in art. to finish something only to fire it up again. to paint over a ruined canvas or wad up a poem and try another. in love it's not so simple. all those painful complicating failures and soul-lacerating endings, all the refused-to-be-believed expiration dates scream back at us from the chasm when love is not enough.