~~ Thomas Campbell
For your consideration, and remembrance: an image from Central Park, taken during a visit with my wife and daughter two years ago.
It is stunning to reflect that fully thirty years have evaporated since the abrupt, shocking, and unfathomably senseless extinction of one of our species brightest artistic, soulful members -- John Winston Lennon. Music has taken on a distinctly paler tone since his death.
Living in Tucson at the time, I left my apartment that evening to run an errand: I was off to purchase something at a (now long defunct) department store, LaBelle's. I remember being well-pleased at the non-stop Beatles tunes which were playing on the radio during my drive; I had no idea what the occasion was -- I figured a famous date in Fab Four history must've been the reason (I'm a huge fan, but not so obsessive to know such arcane details).
It was on the return trip home that I heard the shattering news from the DJ, just after A Day In the Life finished playing.
JFK. Malcom X. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Benigno Aquino. Ghandi. Sadat.
In their own manner, all were political figures who posed challenges to the established social order of their respective societies. Given the unpleasant reality of zealots in our midst the assassination of such titans were at least comprehensible and somewhat predictable tragedies.
Lennon??? A musician???
Give Peace A Chance. All We Need is Love.
When I got back to my apartment all I could do was sit on my couch, mute, with a deep feeling that suddenly a surreal tipping point had been reached and breached -- from then on little would make sense in the realm of human behavior.
(My step-mom Joan, who is Mom to me, called me that night simply to ask, "Are you okay?" That gesture of lovingkindness and tender concern has never left me.)
Perhaps on the World Stage vitriolic suspicion remains the lingua franca. Thankfully, however, among individuals there still exists and is readily shared much in the way of compassion, love, joy and hope, despite the oceans of prejudice, religious and political extremism, and a plethora of other irrational rationalizations promoting division and hatred.
Thus, while my heart still softly aches over the snuffing out of this bright light of a troubadour, his music -- and its message -- continues to flourish in the consciousness of many among us, as we ride this planet across the universe.
While John's body is deceased, we can take comfort from one of the earlier Beatles' gems: he's not really gone . . . as he wrote, I'm Only Sleeping.
Imagine, #1824
© 2010 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.
(click image for larger version)
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