Twenty-five years ago today. He was young and seemingly invincible. One of the Beatles, for crying out loud. But he died anyway. And for no good reason. Shot down at point blank range in front of the New York apartment he shared with his wife, Yoko Ono, and their son.
More than 10 years later, when our Japanese friend Tomoko came to visit, we took her to New York City, and the one place she most wanted to see was the Dakota, site of John Lennon's murder. We had to go there, she said, and stand out front and sing "Imagine." It was a cold, cold day, but we went, we stood, we sang. Across the street, in the section of Central Park known as Strawberry Fields, we found the starburst stone embedded in the earth as a memorial to John, engraved with the one word: "Imagine."
"Imagine all the people, living life in peace." For my parents' generation, the concept of Americans and Japanese, touring New York as friends, would have existed only in the realm of imagination. So there is still hope. But mostly, even after 25 years, we find peace not in the world around us, but only in our imagination. And sometimes, if we are open to it, in our hearts.
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4 comments:
It was Paul who sang "Yesterday" alone. He wrote and performed the song himself.
Lennon was actually the biggest hypocrite of all the Beatles.
George was the sensitive. Lennon was the goofy witty one.
It's true Lennon was probably the biggest hypocrite of the beatles. He shouldn't be glorified because of his untimely death. He's just like the rest of us, except he was an exceptional song writer.
People who only listen to "Imagine" think he is a peaceful and kind. But if you listen to "How do you sleep?" on the same album, you'll see what a cruel jerk he was to Paul. He's like the rest of us.
Yikes! Bad mistake confusing Paul and John. Thanks for setting me straight; I fixed my entry. I don't know what any of the Fab Four were really like, only how they seemed. And it's not my intent to glorify any of them. But John Lennon's death, much like Princess Diana's death years later, did grab the world's attention because he was so famous, part of the context of our lives, and we associated him, rightly or wrongly, with the concept of world peace. That he could die like anyone else, that anyone would even want to kill him, shook us deeply and turned him into something of a martyr. Whatever he may have done or not done, been or not been during his lifetime, his memory still reminds us to "give peace a chance." And that in itself is not a bad legacy.
What?!? too busy getting ready for Christmas to update the blog for 11 days?! *sigh*
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