Twenty nine winters ago John Lennon was doing what most of us do daily - he was on his way home from work. Home from working in his recording studio. Earlier in the day he signed an autograph for the man who hours later would end his life.
IMAGINE if things happened differently that cold night.
Twenty nine years ago I was unmarried, living in my first apartment in Florida. I was 20 years old. It was a warm night and I had the windows open. I recall the searing message that came over the tv, then the radio, then everywhere. I remember newscasters crying. Howard Kosell in tears. A hole was drilled right through me and pain entered. An unsettling silence.
The world mourned the loss of this amazing iconic individual. A visionary of peace who was far more than a musician or rockstar. He wrote of the world 'being one' and perhaps it took his bloody death for that to happen.
How sad.
I recall the days afterward laying on my living room floor listening and crying to every Beatle song played on the stereo and radio. So many possibilities ended with his murder at the Dakota. For a pacifist to die by way of a weapon of steel seems a fate worse than cruel.
Across from his home lay Strawberry Fields. Another irony is the sign posted there. "No playing of musical instruments allowed".
Where better than there?As a society, we allow guns to become available to people who have no business having them. Freedom to own a firearm........to protect yourself. A right of the constitution.
As a society we allow instruments of creativity to be purchased, but ban where and when they can be played. Why? To protect others peace?
This is just more madness in a world overcome by rules that 'allow' people to not have to think or take responsibility for themselves or others.
Some things make little sense to me.
Some things never will.
The legendary lyrics and music from the Beatles are dogma.
Time honored art that collectively became a prayer for peace,
a mantra to end war
and birthed hope for generations to follow.
Here we are
twenty nine years later.
The music still resonates but now with a new generation.
To those who grew up with them, they are forever with us.
We need to give peace a chance.
We need to
IMAGINE.
We need to Imagine Peace
