Imagine

It's the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's death. (Some call it an assassination, but that is defined as an attack for political or religious reasons. This was just to impress a woman.) At the time, Jane Fonda said, "They're killing the poets now." It was a time full of hyperbole along those lines. A horrible but random act against someone that many people respected and/or loved--nothing more--but people wanted it to have some meaning. Well, it did--because it reminded people of the positives in his life, and maybe made people a little kinder as a result. Even today, people will recall the date and think about peace and kindness.

I read an article recently that pointed out that Lennon wasn't the gung-ho pacifist we often recall. When Brian Epstein managed the Beatles, he encouraged them to avoid political statements, and Lennon obeyed for the most part. He was actually quite the hooligan (now there's an old word) when he was young, was occasionally violent to his first wife, ignored his first son, Julian, for many years, and became an outspoken pacifist when it was trendy to do so. "Imagine" was written by a multimillionaire who lived a cushy existence ("Imagine no possessions"). The album before, he had called his fans "peasants". And after a couple of years as an outspoken peacenik, he retreated from the public eye for years.

This is not to say that his activism wasn't heartfelt...just that it wasn't the sum total of his life. Yet we celebrate that part...and that's okay. He was flawed, like the rest of us, but if he serves as a symbol, so be it. My feelings that day thirty years ago didn't harp on any hypocrisy in his life. I was telling myself that all you need is love...and trying to believe it.

I was remembering the songs---when they played "In My Life" on the radio that day, I cried. I discovered the Beatles because the first girl I ever had a crush on, in fifth grade, loved the Beatles, and I drew a cartoon of them to impress her, and became a "fan" because she was. But "She Loves You" blew me away, and I was a True Fan ever thereafter. "Strawberry Fields Forever" still moves me. "I Am the Walrus" has so many layers, it's like a little five-minute concerto. And I love that he used a slamming door as percussion on "Give Peace A Chance".

All the radio stations were playing his solo and Beatles music all day on December 8, 1980. It was what I frequently played on my stereo anyway, but it meant a lot more because millions of people were listening with me. And in that process, a sense of togetherness and a wish for a non-violent world coalesced, if only for a few days. It happens on a smaller scale every year at this time.

And isn't it nice that, the day after we mourn the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we recall the life of a man who, at least for a few years, sang about the idea that there might someday be a world without war? Sure, it's simplistic. And unlikely.

But at least once a year, it's nice that we stop to imagine.