John Lennon | Gurdjieff's teaching: for scholars and practitioners

Posts Tagged ‘John Lennon’

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
=====================

John Lennon: Essence and Reality Part 16: “Memory”

In this unreleased piece, it sounds to me as if Lennon sings:

Memory, oh memory, what you do to me?

Today is all I really need to know.

Why do you have to haunt me when I thought I’d let you go?

I hear voices whispering through the cold and lonely hall.

Memory, memory, release me from your spell.

Why do you have to haunt me always?

Why do you have to haunt me when I thought you’d run away?

Lennon doesn’t sing much else, here, and of what he does, I can only pick up the odd word. What’s this all about? The song obviously has to do with psychological entrapment and freedom. Lennon feels that he’s haunted, under a spell. He is bewildered: “what you do to me?” The spell is purely within his own skull; it’s the flip side of the liberating magic he conjured in “#9 Dream”. Significantly for the total feel of the song, Lennon uses the noble music he originally wrote for “Tennessee”. What’s going on, then?

As I said in respect of “Tennessee”, my guess, for what it’s worth, is that Lennon felt that his homage to Tennessee Williams might come across as over the top, or perhaps even as inaccessible. If that is right, then he decided to rewrite it with lyrics which might mean something to more of his audience: after all, many more people could relate to a song about memory than to the abstruse lyrics Lennon had written in honour of a playwright.

The “Tennessee” lyrics were not, as a whole, a model of clarity. Although the first verses were luminous and powerful, the latter ones remind me of Hopkins’ more impenetrable poems, such as “Harry Ploughman”. Another factor, too, is that the first stanza of Lennon’s original lyrics referred to the USA. This might be work well in the USA, but would Lennon have been concerned about his international audience? In any event, the original lyrics seems to me not only better as lyrics, but also more appropriate for the music. Overall, I have a hunch that Lennon was dissatisfied with both the “Tennessee” and the “Memory” drafts, and that this is why he left the piece unfinished, although it boasted a truly stirring melody.

Yet, there are organic connections between the “Tennessee” lyrics and those he wrote for “Memory”. In terms of feeling, “Memory” is not so far from “the sadness of your soul”, the “spirit mind”, and the “echoed harmony of the cold and lonely naked human being,” of which he sang in “Tennessee”. More precisely, the reference to an “echo” in “Tennessee” evokes the echo of memories. Another connection between the two sets of lyrics is found in the connection Lennon made between pain and artistry. In his Rolling Stone interview, Lennon said that it was pain which had made the great artists what they were.

So both sets of lyrics deal with human pain and freedom. The “Tennessee” version focuses on the role of the artist in expressing even the bleakest reality so clearly that it shows a way forward for the future. In “Memory”, at least in the rough draft we have, which would not have been its final form, the emphasis is on the pain.

That makes the music anomalous, as Lennon so often was. If the music of “Memory” is deep, the lyrics are puzzling. What is the point of saying: “Today is all I need to know, so stop bothering me, memories?” The memories serve a purpose: they call me to be present before them. They call me to be the adult for myself, to use the Gurdjieff’s language, as preserved in Solange Claustres’ important book Becoming Conscious with Mr Gurdjieff. When I was about four year old, I was trapped in a house by a wild sheep. By myself, frightened child, I could do nothing but wait for it to go away. Fortunately, my father came along and tied it up. Now I have to do that sort of thing for myself.

And so it is with memories. There are very different sorts of memories; each centre has its own proper memory. The memories Lennon is speaking of here sound to me as if they are associations in formatory apparatus, and that the painful feelings they evoke are negative emotions. Negative emotions, of course, are not sourced in the feeling centre, but are a sort of growth drawn from the perversion of instinctive centre (for details of these terms and references to the authoritative sources, meaning Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, see Sophia Wellbeloved’s Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts).

If “I am present”, again in Gurdjieff’s sense, life is real (or “responsible”), and these associations and negative emotions lose their power. But that is not enough. It is not enough to displace them for a time. They need to be seen, acknowledged, and my responsibility accepted, my suffering sacrificed, and my lessons learned. They need to be digested. Precisely here, I think, is Lennon’s problem.

Lennon wants to escape the pain: that is understandable. The pain is a providential arrangement to make us take action. But what action? Sometimes all you can do is to wait in the house until the animal goes away. However, not in the case of memories and negative emotions. There we can take action. In one of the Paris group meetings, Gurdjieff said “I am bigger than my associations” (p.50, Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-6). And that is the truth.

The memories which hurt the most are, I find, those where I myself have done something I feel is wrong, or I feel that I’ve failed. And I doubt that other people are too different in that respect. Sometimes the failure is purely imaginary: sometimes something in us feels to blame or regretful, as if we could or should have done more. It may be absurd or it may be quite right. But the real work begins when we can acknowledge it for what it was, whatever it was, and if I don’t know what it was, to acknowledge that, and to study.

There are, as Gurdjieff said, two types of suffering, conscious and unconscious suffering. The first has a future, it’s the key to our human potential. Incidentally, it’s intimately related to joy, the one can call the other. But to focus on our present concern, the pain Lennon speaks of is unconscious suffering. The trick is to make it conscious. That is, to turn regret into remorse. Mr Adie put it almost perfectly in “It’s A Painful Truth”, from his book (George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia). Mr Adie said to someone who had raised just these issues we’re discussing:

… be with it, to face it; not to try and change it. If you can look at it long enough, and remain present before it, you will understand. It will make you suffer. Intentional suffering is there; and eventually you will repair that. You will see. You will have seen the causes. You will weigh it, see its proper level, so that in a way, it could not happen again, because you will know how it happened, why you went wrong, and how useless this unconscious suffering is. Perhaps I even sense something like remorse, or at least something in that direction. But you will know all that.

It isn’t so very difficult to get a grasp on this, but it is almost impossible to master it, because it’s the work of a lifetime. To repair the past is really to repair myself, because I am the past, a past which is present in some mysterious way to the ever-manifesting moment, and is always opening onto the future. So much is involved in this concept of repairing the past that it’s mind-boggling. But the temptation to retreat before the challenge should, I feel, be resisted. I think the thing is to set out some principles, and in doing so, to take the baton, as it were, from Lennon, and to run with it, even if only for a few steps. So let me try and put out some general ideas.

First, remorse is a feeling of myself. I feel myself in relation to my manifestations. Of course memory is involved, but the memory of formatory apparatus is seasoned, as it were, with the memory of the feeling centre. It’s very difficult to describe this, but when it happens it’s as the old man in a black and white photo has suddenly taken on colour and sat down to talk with you. Gurdjieff described this remorse as washing, soaking and cleaning. In one of the group meetings he gave the example of tangerine. It’s salty and must be purified before it can become jam. And so it is for us, human purification is remorse (p. 94, Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-6).

Second, we need to keep our past, our faults our virtues and all, in perspective. We all have a tendency to dramatize and exaggerate the importance of our own joys and sufferings. This is something where we mutually aid each other. We catch theatrics from each other, as it were. If we can look at them, we often recognize that our lingering associations have something of the “beat-up” about them. In this respect, Lennon’s philosophy of the importance of the “artist” worked against him. But to be fair, the press did treat all his actions as media-worthy. Here the achievement would have been to shrink his perception of the newspapers and radio back to size.

Third, when tormented by painful memories, it often seems as if the other people are inside me. This subliminal sense that other people – and even my old self – are inside me is a common and relatively mild form of possession. It is, if you like, possession by one’s own associations, and so Lennon’s reference to haunting is terribly accurate. (A good example is found in Bernie Taupin’s lyrics for “The Boy in the Red Shoes” from Elton John’s Songs from the West Coast album: “It’s all inside my head, the boy in the red shoes is dancing by my bed”). I should add that although it’s usually what I call a mild form of possession, it’s none the less a serious matter for all that, because it’s a function of our lack of being.

Fourth, related to this, something in us believes that everything has to be someone’s fault. And there’s a lot in us (our accursed mirage of justice) which does not like to see someone get away with it. Here it’s particularly important to learn how to sacrifice one’s (unconscious) suffering. Again, we mechanically moralize everything. We say “it wasn’t the ten cents, it was the principle.”

Fifth, the relationship with parents are often paradigms. The memories and associations around parents are often difficult to deal with because difficult it’s difficult for us to not to believe at some level that they were conscious. I dealt with that and Lennon’s contribution in the “Mother” blog. But I feel there’s much more to explore. The next Lennon blog will look at “How” and “Jealous Guy” from the Imagine album.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

1 June 2010

Joseph Azize has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.

“Maronites” is pp.279-282 of “The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia” published by Cambridge University Press and edited by James Jupp.

=================================

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

June 1, 2010 at 10:57 am

Posted in JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE & REALITY: Memory, JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Tagged with conscious and unconscious suffering, GEORGE ADIE: A GURDJIEFF PUPIL IN AUSTRALIA, Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts, intentional suffering, John Lennon, John Lennon lyrics, Joseph Azize, memory, Mr Adie, negative emotions, Ouspensky, remorse, Sophia Wellbeloved

John Lennon: Essence and Reality Part 15: “Mother”

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
============================

=============================

John Lennnon c 1948

Part 15: “Mother”

Mother. “Mother” is the most harrowing song Lennon ever recorded, and
is the most harrowing piece of rock’n’roll I have heard or could
imagine being put down. There is even something confronting about its
stark title: it isn’t “Mother, You Had Me”, or “Goodbye, Mother” or
“My Mother”. It’s just plain “Mother”. It bears a mute challenge: what
does “mother” mean to you? The word utters a primal reality. Four
other songs on 1970’s classic John Lennon-Plastic Ono Band album also
had one word titles fired point-blank: “Isolation”, “Remember”, “Love”
and “God”. With nothing but single words, Lennon evokes divinity, a
parent, a terrifying state of existence, a poignant faculty of the
psyche, and the most powerful feeling-impulse we know. This is a
record of essential experiences. All artifice, all glossy surfaces,
are sanded back, and the heart, the raw matter of life is presented
through the vehicle of an art so perfectly mastered as to appear
artless. On this album, Lennon means and does business. Yet, it is
also the moment of his greatest apparent hypocrisy, his most signal
failure to live up to his own standards.

Mother. Our relationships with our parents are always in flux, even
after they have died. Nothing seems to remain static for very long:
not how we feel towards them, not what we think of them, not our
dominant memories, and not our overall assessments of them. And it
must be so, because our relationship with our parents is essential,
and as long we change, so will that relationship. This is neither good
nor bad; it is simply a fact. Good and bad become meaningful only when
we have an aim, and so a set of principles. If we are aiming for
conscious growth, then we must aim to become more loving, and this
will mean – at an absolutely fundamental level – to love our parents,
whatever issues we may have had. Until we can find love there, in that
relationship, we can only know passion and obsession mixed with
appreciation and esteem in varying degrees (and passion, I think, is
what passes for love with us).

When we speak about Lennon’s life a little further below, his mother
Julia and his father Fred, I shall mention the distortion which seems
to inevitably affect our memories of our parents. But just to briefly
make the point here, one cannot love while we are subject to these
distortions, irrespective of whether they are “favourable” or
“unfavourable” distortions. Love is impartial, or more accurately, it
includes impartiality, as George Adie said.

Of course, we cannot love anyone, not even mothers, on demand, and
anyone who thinks so doesn’t know. But we can do something in that
direction, and the need to do so becomes more urgent each day we have
not reached that state, because the longer it’s left, the harder it
gets. What we can do is prepare the soil for love by forming attitudes
which might foster or welcome love, by cultivating understanding, and
by striving to make negative emotions passive. Perhaps most
importantly of all, we can strive to acquire being, and with that,
individual will. As Gurdjieff is reported to have said: “Sometimes ‘it
loves’ and sometimes ‘it does not love’. … In order to be a good
Christian (and so to love) one must be. To be means to be master of
oneself. If a man is not his own master he has nothing and can have
nothing.” (In Search of the Miraculous, 102)

Being stands above emotion, and individual will is not just a power of
decision-making, but a manifestation of the real self which is based
on and understands my own unique makeup (so this will is not
experienced as tyrannical or even as an imposition, but more as a
return to home, to where I should be). Making effort, any effort for
being and individual will, allows more emotional control, so that we
can play a conscious role in forming the attitudes we want and need.
There are no guarantees, but we can make honest attempts. The road is
one of self-education, or self-agriculture. We know that if we want
anything to grow in a particular field we need to prepare the earth by
working it, adding substances to it, and removing impediments. And so
it is with loving our parents.

At some point in life, everyone will have issues in their
relationships with their parents, or so I see it. I am not speaking
about resentments, but about issues: ongoing attempts to reconcile
difference of opinion on important matters. I do not believe that it
is possible not to have some sort of serious issue, provided only that
you know your parents long enough and are sufficiently honest with
yourself. The more anyone argues otherwise, the more they convince me
that they’re in denial. So it is not just you, and it isn’t just me:
we’re all in the same position.

One can, of course, form theories about this: for example, that in
growing up in a world different from that which our parents knew they
must inevitably, to some extent, misunderstand us. Or one can theorise
and say that in acquiring our own individuality there must be a
reaction against our parents’ individualities. That is, there is an
inevitable tension between the infant’s natural impulse to imitate the
parents and the adolescent’s urge to become independent individual. We
could say that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and
there’s a lot of truth in all that. However my assertion is not based
on either theory: it’s just an observation. But the observation is
good enough for me. It is based partly on introspective observation,
and also, wherever I’ve been close enough to someone to tell, there
have been issues.

I am not speaking about dislike. I am not saying that we are bound to
dislike let alone hate our parents. On the contrary, I think that what
is real in the relationship is the love. An essence relationship is
always and can only be one of love. My position is that the
differences and issues arise in personality, and can be handled
without rancour. It is an indictment of us that they too infrequently
are. One does sometimes see cases where beneath even the disagreements
and misunderstandings there is a current of certainty in love. True
affection is not given on condition or subject to recall.

The issues are more or less serious, and are more or less harmonised
or aggravated by the passing years, but they’re always there. To take
an example which struck me quite forcibly, one of my friends had the
not a-typical match of the “perfect mother” and the “perfectly awful
father”. In this case, I always found the beauty more puzzling than
the straight-forward beast. One day, when he was already in his 40s
and his mother had been dead for several months, my friend suddenly
said to me, in what was a mildly depressed explosion, that his mother
had silently consented to his father’s rages. She had effectively
collaborated with him. As stated, I think everyone has issues with
their parents.

More importantly for this article, John Lennon thought so too. When he
performed “Mother” at Madison Square Garden, he introduced it like
this: “… a lot of people thought it was just about my parents, but
it’s about 99% of the parents, alive or half-dead.” I only wonder why
he made an exception for one per cent. Was it just optimism? Yet, the
song itself is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. Lyrically, it is
almost clinical in its concise, naked statements of fact:

Mother!
You had me,
But I never had you.
I wanted you.
You didn’t want me.
So I,
I just got to tell you:
Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Father!
You left me.
I never left you.
I needed you so bad.
You didn’t need me.
So I,
I just got to tell you:
Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Children!
Don’t do what I have done.
I couldn’t walk,
And I tried to run.
So I,
I just got to tell you:
Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Mamma don’t go!
Daddy come home!
Mamma don’t go! Daddy come home!

I have allowed a separate line for each line of the song as it’s sung.
The lyric sheet doesn’t do justice to the measured barrage of short
addresses. The entire sound of the piece is funereal. It sounded like
that to me the first time I heard it, and it has never sounded any
other way. But the lyrics, when I set out then like this, read to me
like an indictment. Except for the emotion in Lennon’s verse, one
could imagine a clerk of the court reading them, methodically
ploughing on (so too, in “God”, the list of people and things Lennon
does not believe in sounds like a list of convicts read in a
Dickensian criminal court). And who does it indict? Lennon’s parents,
of course, but equally, also himself. Lennon does not preach at his
family from some easily assumed superiority. Even his singing of the
opening word of each verse – Mother! Father! Children! – sounds more
like a calling from island to island.

Another feature of the song is its extreme economy with words. Even
when Lennon sings: “I just got to tell you, goodbye”, he’s being
minimalist. He means that he has to say it, and that’s all there is to
say. He’s driven to impose finality. Even the word “just”, which I
recall Lennon and McCartney once said was a “filler”, to be avoided
where possible, is exactly the right word for the poetry.

Yet, there is no finality. After the prose of the verses bidding
farewell to mother, father and children, Lennon yells: “Don’t go! Come
back!” Which is it, goodbye or come back? It’s both. His mind and his
heart sing that he has to take his leave, and move on. But his
feelings scream that he wants more of them, not less. The song is
made by this tension between the two poles of departure and return,
burying and retrieving the past. The tension cannot be maintained in
life, but only in the song.

The third verse is the key to the whole piece: he accepts that he is a
failure as a parent, and can do nothing more constructive than to warn
his “children” (although he only had Julian, at that point) not to
follow his example. The children are not part of the banshee grief.
Yet, we feel that this verse is related to the rest of the song. There
is a hope that the children may succeed where Lennon and his parents
have not. Lennon tells the children to learn from the pitiful examples
before them, and to this end, he’s prepared to let us see that he had
never recovered from his painful childhood. Was Lennon perhaps saying
that he tried to run too soon because he was running after his
parents? Maybe. Parents spend a bit of time encouraging their children
to take a few steps towards them, and anyone who has ever done this
knows how deep and purely joyous are the feelings evoked in both the
adult and the toddler by this simple play. No parent would dream of
coercing the child to run towards them, and yet, perhaps, they make
the demand that with their emotions the children race the wind. So
Lennon warned the children, and showed them where the dangers are. Of
course, we are the children, and so too, I think was Lennon. After
all, he did try again with Julian and later with Sean.

But here we come to the apparent hypocrisy I referred to above. At the
time Lennon wrote “Mother” he had a child, and had run out on him.
Lennon could have done more for and with his son, but it appears that
he was too selfish to do so. My own view is that he knew he could rely
on Cynthia, his first wife, and this made it easier for him to leave.
I am not seeking either to excuse or to condemn Lennon, but just to
state that whatever Lennon’s subjective culpability, there is an
“apparent hypocrisy”, and Cynthia’s book, with Julian’s forward
effectively says as much. This being so, no wonder he was so cool to
her on the few times they met in the 70s: she reminded him of his bad
conscience. You can even say that Cynthia carried the burden of his
self-centeredness.

Lennon did not use the word “selfish” on “Mother”, even though, if one
thinks it through, it’s tolerably obvious that selfishness is the
danger Lennon was pointing to. There are almost no bounds to our
selfishness, and yet, once we have risen above it, selfishness has no
strength at all. People will gladly sacrifice their health, their
money, and their own lives, once they have put selfishness beneath
them. Once again, I think of Dickens, and in particular, of Sidney
Carlton from A Tale of Two Cities. But it is not a case of “once
overcome, forever vanquished”. One of the real dangers in parenting,
as in life in general, but especially in parenting, is that while the
real me, the essential I, will make a sacrifice, personality will come
in later on and claim credit. Personality claims its “due reward”, it
speaks the language of entitlement. Obviously, an act of love can
never come with a demand for gratitude let alone recognition. Such a
demand proves that it is not and never was “love”. This requirement of
reciprocation – love me as I loved you – ruins many relationships.
It’s a commerce in the expression of affection, and it excludes love
because it swallows up everything real with selfishness.

Then love becomes mixed – not in itself, because in itself love cannot
be sullied. But love can become mixed in our psyches by an emotional
entanglement. The mother’s love is forever being offered, and then
withdrawn if her prior unstated conditions are not met. The child
becomes confused and hurt: “I thought you loved me for myself, but now
you’ll reject me if I cannot force myself to some display which to me
feels unnatural?”

And yet, I must admit that people who spend all their lives in
personality seem to be content with this state of affairs, or at least
not to question it. How can such situations persist? Surely one part
of the answer is that we do not confront these questions sufficiently,
and with sufficient being. We do not place ourselves before the
issues: we think about things, and our emotions pass over the fields
of our lives in a more or less intense shadow play. And then, with
time, the ordinary tempo of our existence reasserts itself, and the
tender pink membranes of scar tissue are buried deep. But the
“pondering” (or “being-logical-confrontation”, as Gurdjieff put it),
which could lead to a real change – to maturity – is rare.

If we could ponder, we would see the lies we tell ourselves. By
“lies”, I don’t just mean outright untruths, saying that I was there
at 5 o’clock when in fact I wasn’t. I chiefly mean self-deception and
distortion. These deceits always support a particular judgment: “My
mother was the greatest”, or the opposite, or something different. In
their turn, these moral judgments seem to always be that things were
or were not as they should have been.

It is hard not to judge our parents, after all, they teach us to
judge. The irony is that this lesson which we learn only too well,
then works against them. I knew a woman who effectively taught her
children to criticise and be embarrassed of their father. She did not
do it consciously of course, but that was the effect of her incessant
and vicious attacks. It was as if she thought that her children would
rely upon and esteem her all the more if she could alienate them from
their father. With one child, she succeeded, with another she failed,
and with the third the results were mixed. But what she never
appreciated was that if she taught them to criticise and to be
embarrassed of one parent, they could do the same with the other, and
would become suspicious of and hostile to most of the world.

These judgments support what Adie called “justified by God
grievances”, and as he saw so deeply, the more justification there is
for a grievance, the more dangerous it is. Gurdjieff showed that
negative emotions can never be justified. Further, as he said, many of
our grievances are based upon a false belief that matters could have
been different, when in fact, as he said, “If one thing could been
different everything could been different.” (In Search of the
Miraculous, 21-2).

Clearly, “Mother” is entirely founded on Lennon’s belief that his
parents should not have left him. The recent publication of Philip
Norman’s book on Lennon was important not least because it refocussed
the picture we had of Lennon’s parents. This piece is already long
enough, so I encourage anyone interested to read Norman. But the
bottom line is this: the fact of the matter was not so much that Fred
Lennon ran out on Lennon (although there is some truth in that, he
could have made greater efforts to speak to his son). It’s more that
Fred was weak: “just a pawn outplayed by a dominating queen”, as
Bernie Taupin said of Elton. Here the queen was probably Lennon’s Aunt
Mimi more than his mother Julia. Further, Norman also reveals that
Lennon knew that there were two sides to the story: one of Fred’s
brothers, John’s uncle, had written to him, setting out their side of
the story.

So Lennon’s view of the past had become garbled, and he seemed to be
wedded to the distortion. When we are subject to this distortion, we
can remember mostly those incidents which fit the twisted
world-picture. So, if for example, I have a grudge against someone,
then whatever unpleasant things they did come to mind quickly and
forcibly, and when they do, I feel at once the impact of my
accumulated dislike. Hatred is a feast for a glutton, and it is never
satisfied without revenge, which is why revenge seems so sweet. On the
other hand, if while I’m in the grip of this distortion I do manage to
remember the good things my parents did, they tend to come with less
power. In fact, they often call up with them an accuser, who will
explain them away. This is part of the spell of negative emotions:
they have this defensive quality that they attract similar negative
emotions and supporting memories, and subject reality to a selective
canon of interpretation. Being able to curse is a form of revenge, and
the gladness of cursing then seems to justify the resentment. And so
the fatal cycle unfolds.

There are two vitally important things here. First, we feel we must
judge, and in the rush to judgment, we introduce distortions.
Incidentally, U2 capture this very nicely in one of my favourite U2
songs, “Dirty Day” from Zooropa. Second, we are bound to these painful
untruths by the strongest bonds – our sufferings. As Gurdjieff said:
“Man is made in such a way that he is never so much attached to
anything as he is to his suffering.” (In Search of the Miraculous,
274)

I feel as if I could finish there, but one cannot leave “Mother”
without mention of Janov and the “Primal Scream” therapy he gave
Lennon and Ono. At the opening of this piece, I described the one-word
title “Mother” as a “primal reality”. In the Rolling Stone interview,
the question was raised as to whether John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band
might be the first “primal” album. As I recall, Lennon quite properly
deflected the question as a sterile curiosity about labels. “Was
George’s the first Gita album? It’s that relevant”, he said as I
remember, meaning that what you called it was irrelevant. But while
Lennon may not have been keen about such tags, the album is a record
of a man’s encounter with the first human things.

When I read Janov’s The Primal Scream, I was impressed by certain key
insights, but that was it. It struck me like having a black-tie supper
to celebrate painting the house. I’m not qualified to speak about
Janov’s therapy on Lennon, although I am suspicious. Lennon was quite
enthusiastic about it for a while. He had Janov come to England to
treat him, and when Janov had to return to the USA, he followed him
there. Although he soon left Janov rather abruptly, he retained a
sense of the importance of Janov’s ideas, at least for a while. Thus
in “Aisumasen” from Mind Games, he says “It’s hard enough, I know, to
feel your own pain”. Gurdjieff spoke of “intentional suffering”, but
also of “conscious labours”. There is a lot more to do than relieve
one’s past tortures. From what I can see, Lennon tried to move on. But
primal therapy did not seem to help him tremendously in the middle
term, if Lennon’s experiences in Los Angeles are any guide.
Shouldering the responsibility of raising a child, however, did: it
brought him to the clear-eyed sanity of “Beautiful Boy”, “Clean Up
Time”, “Living On Borrowed Time” and “Grow Old With Me”.

Also, the theory that all traumas go back to childhood, or even to
birth, leases a spurious credibility from a trick of the eye. When we
try to account for anything, we consider its history. An earlier cause
always seems to be a truer cause. So if a problem in an adult can be
attributed to something which occurred in childhood, we seem – by this
trick of the eye – to be really probing the depths. Janov’s idea that
childbirth was causative of later disorders may then seem persuasive
beyond what any evidence would warrant, simply any later conditions or
factors can be explained as derived from, or being potent because of,
the earlier problem – and it is difficult to prove the hypothesis
wrong.

To try and sum it up, I feel that there is a real danger of
identifying with the pain, and of manufacturing it in accordance with
expectations. Perhaps it’s something like the way that if you think
about headaches long enough, you’ll get one. I have a sense that there
is a good idea somewhere in the slick presentation which was Primal
Therapy, but that it was taken to an extreme, and that other good
ideas were blocked out by the seduction of the “primal scream” theory.
I am not saying that Dr Janov never helped anyone. I would be quite
certain that he did. But I cannot help but wonder if this had more to
do with his considerable personal powers than with the theoretical
value of his Primal Therapy.

As one learns to feel one’s own pain, one needs to learn be able to
bear it. One can proceed only by careful degrees. Perhaps this is part
of the reason why a teacher is necessary on the spiritual path, at
least in the beginning. My own view of people such as Van Gogh is that
they could not bear the force of their own impressions. To be able to
bear any influence, especially perhaps pain and suffering, being and
understanding are needed. There is no such thing as emotional
strength: the emotions do not have muscles of any description. If we
have being, then our emotions will not knock us over. But I cannot
believe that it is helpful to relive the pain and lie on the ground
screaming. The idea of being able to feel your pain is good, but the
idea of being able to feel your own presence is even better. As
Gurdjieff said in his last years, “by so much as one is conscious,
there is no more suffering.”

Lennon returned to some of these ideas later on in a song which was
never publicly released, and which I know as “Memory”. We come to that song next time, and continue this train of thought.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
==================================
Joseph Azize has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.

===================================

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

December 3, 2009 at 11:44 am

ELTON JOHN: The Songs of Self-Knowledge (Part 1)

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

=======================

Bernie Taupin and Elton John

“It is on your own self-knowledge and experience that the knowledge and experience of everything else depend.”So spoke the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing more than 600 years ago, in what is the greatest work of mysticism in the English tongue known to me (see ch 43 of Clifton Wolters’ translation). As I said in the first Elton John blog, it is through knowledge of this life and our selves that we come to knowledge of a higher life and, once more, our selves. But, of course, our experience of our selves on that other level is quite different.

And so it is that I return to Elton John, because I sense that sometimes something sublime comes from beyond and can be felt through the songs Of all their work, perhaps John and Taupin touch the sublime most often on these songs of self-knowledge, such as “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”, “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “The Sweetest Addiction”.

Other than John Lennon, I can think of no other artistes of their era like Elton John and Bernie Taupin for excelling in what I might call “songs of self-knowledge” or perhaps “songs of reflective biography “. Certainly, I do not know of anyone else in popular music who has developed such a sustained corpus of work over a period of 30 years. I think that Taupin’s work is marked by an impartiality and even fearlessness as much as Lennon’s was. After all, Taupin is writing lyrics for another person to set to music and perform, and not just anyone, but Elton John.

Meditating on the Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy album led me to a discovery which really should have been apparent before, but had somehow escaped me. And that is that although we exclusively think of Taupin as someone who writes the words, he is in a very real way, a musician. His instrument just happens to be his words, an instrument few can master, and his great achievement is that he developed his art to the lofty degree where his words sing on the page with an unheard melody. Incidentally, much as I respect Dylan’s achievements, I don’t hear that much self-knowledge in his songs, although there is certainly tremendous insight and his lyrics often have the musicality I find in Taupin’s. But in the end, Dylan seems to me to hide behind his presentation, while John and Taupin reveal, and so whatever self-understanding he has remains in obscurity. Only outside of popular music, for example with Gerard Hopkins, do I find even more self-knowledge and musicality combined than I do in Taupin.

However, we must come back to this fundamentally important question of the search for self-knowledge. If one has been touched by the search, then the questions “Who am I?” and “What am I?” always demand a response, although – and perhaps even because – they can never be answered once and for all. If we speak of self-knowledge, then because it is self-knowledge, we can take no one else’s word for it. Self-discovery is only possible because a higher part of us is impartial. When I see myself, the lower self becomes transparent to a higher part in myself, and that higher part operates under entirely different rules, and has different powers.

Even if I am alone in my room, yet all of my learning takes place within a socially-constructed world, and I am forever learning from and with others. It is not just that we can compare ourselves to others, find similarities and draw distinctions. Neither is it just that we can get good ideas, or follow other people’s methods. We can also, to an extent, recognize ourselves in others. This doesn’t mean seeing that the details of our loves are identical, although this can occur. More deeply, it means seeing the human condition beneath the accidental facts and biographical details; seeing that we all share in this common humanity, and that we make it what it is in all its inexhaustible variety.

The essential self may be approximately described in words, and we can even figure out some things about ourselves with our intellects, but it’s only discovered through feeling, and, of course, there are levels of feeling and hence of self-knowledge. But affirmation of the goodness of life is a feeling impulse which will bring impartiality. This entails seeing myself without undue self-appreciation or self-hatred. Full and complete impartiality, however, is a function of the essential self, the soul. The soul brings something trans-personal in self-knowledge, an awareness of a call, a memory of something always just forgotten.

When I speak of songs of self-knowledge I am not speaking of narcissism. “My Way” is narcissistic and self-congratulatory, but as we shall see, the music I’m discussing is not. It is not spiritual, either, and yet it isn’t divorced from the spirit. Perhaps the first striking feature of these “songs of self-knowledge” is their quantity: John and Taupin entered the field in a convincing way with 1975’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and updated this tour de force on 2006’s The Captain and the Kid. These were albums completely devoted to reflection on their own history as artistes. In addition, there are many songs of this genre on The Fox, Made in England, Songs from the West Coast, and Peachtree Road. The theme clearly means a great deal to them, and has meant more as they grow older, having both more material and more leisure for reflection. To really understand what I am writing about, you will need to hear the music, beginning with Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, which for my money (and I’m not alone in this) is their greatest achievement, surpassing even the magnificent Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. In the discussion, I’ll be referring to the tracks as they were on the record, five tracks on each of its two sides. We shall see why a little later.

The first track, the title track, is a good example of Elton John’s originality: it sounds like no song you’ve ever heard before. Until the chorus, it has no almost melody, although it has a sound and a rhythm, and the effect of the song seems perhaps even stronger for all that. You know that this song was not produced in a hit factory, because small clusters of words are broken into islands of sense by a jagged phrasing and oddly placed emphasis: “Captain Fan-tastic … raised and regimented … hardly a hero … Just someone his mother might know.” This works, partly, I think, because he’s telling a story, and an achingly beautiful tune like that of “Your Song” might distract from the narrative, while the strength of the lyrics is quite sufficient to hold our attention and interest. “Raised and regimented”: it is hard to imagine that any three less assuming words could be found to say so much about what in a later song they would describe as a “repressed” youth.

Elton, of course, is Captain Fantastic, while Taupin is the Brown Dirt Cowboy, turning brown in his ‘saddle’ even as the precocious Captain inhabits the stimulating but artificial city. They are painted not quite as opposites, but as contrasts united by a common aspiration for the “honey the hive could be holding”. In a wonderful expression, their pursuit of their art takes them “from the end of the world to your town”. After all, wherever they are seems to them to be the end of the world, while wherever you are, and no matter how small a target, they are infallibly delivered to you through the electronic media. And yet, for them, their careers have been a ‘long and lonely climb’, which they also describe as walking on a wire and as ‘stepping in the ring’.

In an artistic touch of considerable finesse, these two characters, our hosts in this autobiography-for-two, are distinguished by their food. The Captain has cornflakes and tea with sugar: the Cowboy eats “sweet chocolate biscuits, and red rosy apples in summer”. Later in the song, when they are struggling to establish themselves in their chosen careers, they share the same food, “cheap easy meals”, which as Taupin wryly notes, “are hardly a home on the range”. I am fairly certain that readers will be able to point me to many examples of autobiography rock, hitherto unknown to me. And I’m quite sure that some of these will prove to be considerable achievements. But I’ll be very surprised if any of these use simple references to differences in diet with anything like the symbolic force that Taupin does.

There is a lot of history in these lines: one couplet juxtaposes the ‘City Slick Captain’ with the ‘still green and growing’ Cowboy. Then we’re told of “weak winged young sparrows that starve in the winter” and “broken young children on the wheels of the winners”. The Captain and the Kid must have seen a lot of callousness and even bastardry. The lyrics for a song called “Dogs in the Kitchen” were printed with the lyrics, although the song is not on the album, if it was ever recorded. The sentiments seem so raw that if Elton did them justice, the product may not have been a palatable release for the average record company. The very first line is: “All our innocence gave way to lust”. And that was the sweetener:

Poor boys fight to stay alive …
Uncage us, we’re restless, snarled the dogs in the kitchen.
Howling in the heatwave, riding all the bitchin’ ladies.
Who got the first bite in on the greasy bone?
… the vultures belch in their swivel chairs,
And the vampires all wear ties.

It is unnerving to think of writers being likened to greasy bones and quarrelled over by cannibalistic entrepreneurs. This gives us a gritty perspective on the title track, where Elton sings: “We’ve thrown in the towel too many times, our for the count when we’re down”. This is why I say that this is fundamentally a universe apart, and two dimensions deeper than Sinatra’s “regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again …”.

However, even the most powerful missiles need to be launched and guided, and it’s the music which delivers these words. The real magic, for me, is in the combination. To start with, the simplicity of the title track is like innocence made audible. Then, at about 1’ 46” when Elton begins to sing about the Brown Dirt Cowboy, the music picks up. Steady country and western strumming effortlessly evokes an air of ‘childhood at home’ feel, but becomes ‘rockier’ as the song proceeds. This musical development naturally bridges the twin worlds of town and country, the passage from youth to adolescence, the fall from fruit to fat, and the journey from the idyllic woods to wherever we are. The important connection, of course, is between John and Taupin: “hand in hand went music and the rhyme”. One of the odd things is that while Elton is the city-slicker and is significantly called ‘the Captain’, he was, in some ways more vulnerable and innocent than Taupin: one has the feeling that the Cowboy was canny enough for the two of them. This masterly track nicely sets the stage, and introduces its heroes to the challenging world at the same time as it introduces them to us.

The very next track is the knowing “Tower of Babel”. Its first sounds are as ominous and resonant as two tolls on an undertaker’s bell: “Snow – cement – “ and we are immediately submerged in a world of barely speakable cynicism:

Were the darlings on the sideline
Dreaming up such cherished lies
To whisper in your ears before you die?

As with the title track, Taupin is not saying that their early years were tough. He is saying that they were facing starvation, and even the prospect of death. There is not much here about knowing yourself, but knowledge is demonstrated. Too often, we lie to ourselves about the past: we paint it in pictures either too black or too white. In each case we’re really trying to project an image of ourselves (“I understand and forgive all”, or the opposite). But there is no honesty without fearlessness. If someone was a bastard, why not say so? Here, someone has learned a lesson and tells the truth, let the chips fall where they may. Had he said it in those words, it would have sounded indulgent. But Taupin just tells it as it was, so we can take it or leave it. Then we’re into the chorus:

It’s party time for the guys in the Tower of Babel
Sodom meet Gomorrah, Cain meet Abel. …
Watch them dig their graves,
‘Cos Jesus don’t save the guys in the Tower of Babel.

The Biblical terms add a surprising solemnity, and universalise the experience of these two young men. Taupin will open his bible again, for example, on “Just like Noah’s Ark”, from The Captain and the Kid. It’s funny how often non-believers quote the Bible and appeal to Jesus and salvation. It’s also an odd image because the point of the Tower is that it was never completed. The ‘Babel’ here is both the ‘Babylon’ of John’s Apocalypse, the city of the harlot and unspeakable sin, and the Tower which is cast down and has became a symbol of false pride and arrogance. And it also fits the skyscrapers where the captains of industry lurk as if it were designed for them. So, even if it’s a rather anomalous metaphor, it’s nonetheless evocative and multi-dimensional. The crudity of their money-chase is underscored by the fact that, as even more than with the title track, there is no tuneful melodic line : it is as if the omen-like intensity of the words breaks their symphonic chains. But that changes at the chorus “It’s party time for the guys in the Tower of Babel. Sodom meet Gomorrah! Cain, meet Abel!”

So “Babel” is one raw and fiery song. The significance of its first black statement, the stark single word ‘Snow’, is obvious. The second verse opens with the knell of two words ‘Junk – Angel’, and takes us down beneath the floorboards into the company of cockroaches, where the dealers in the basement are “filling your prescription for a brand new heart attack”.

On track three, the tone softens with the beguilingly musical: “Bitter Fingers”. It opens in the voice of an entertainer addressing the songwriters:

I’m going on the circuit, doing all the pubs,
And I really need a song, boys, to stir those workers up,
And get their wives to sing it with me …

It isn’t that the entertainer is insincere, he’s just selfish, insensitive and second-rate. He’s been deeply dyed in the industry. After two bouncing verses of this blarney, the gears crunch, and Elton snarls:

It’s hard to write a song with bitter fingers,
So much to prove, so few to tell you why.
Those old die-hards in Denmark Street start laughing
At the keyboard player’s hollow haunted eyes …
No more long days hocking hunks of garbage.
Bitter fingers never swung on swinging stars.

I had to cite those last two lines if not just for the alliteration. Although it is the first track on side two, I shall deal here with “Meal Ticket”. It covers something of the same ground as “Tower of Babel” and “Bitter Fingers”, but this time, it directly reveals what “Fingers” had only implied: that the songwriters could themselves be mercenary. I take it that, in the very first line, Elton is aggressively addressing music industry power brokers:

I can hound you if I need to,
Sip your brandy from a crystal shoe …
While the others climb reaching dizzy heights,
The world’s in front of me in black and white:
I’m on the bottom line, I’m on the bottom line.

… While the Diamond Jims
And the Kings Road pimps
Breathe heavy in their brand new clothes.

So here are both sides: the boys’ desperation, and the cynical, selfish parasitism which has driven them where they never thought to go. We’re now removed from the innocence of the title track by a margin that can be crossed but not measured:

And I gotta get a meal ticket.
To survive you need a meal ticket,
To stay alive you need a meal ticket.
Feel no pain, no pain; no regret, no regret.
When the line’s been signed you’re someone else.

I took this song out of turn because these last three songs, like “Dogs in the Kitchen”, deal directly with an important issue: how we relate to being abused. Here the abuse is bloodsucking by professionals in suits and ties, but in life we find countless other examples. The starting point is to see it for what it is. Of course we have been taught to love our enemies, but this does not mean to pretend that they are not your enemies or have not harmed you. One can aspire to say “Forgive them for they know not what they do”, although to be candid, one can know that but yet be incapable of feeling anything which corresponds to it. As the late George Adie said, that sentiment is the ultimate in impartiality. We are still learning to be impartial for short moments. The ultimate is not yet within grasp, though we must not give up on that account.

What I like about these three songs, indeed, what I respect, is that Taupin states his disgust in all its bare ugliness without excuse, apology or evasion. He does not indulge in hatred, he just paints what he saw and felt. It isn’t pretty, but it is arresting. It has, to my mind, something of the quality of some of Tennessee Williams’ work, which is noteworthy, because Taupin mentions him at least twice, on “Lies” from Made in England, and on “Old Sixty Seven” from The Captain and the Kid. Of course, Taupin was attracted to Williams’ work because of a pre-existing similarity of disposition, just as Lennon was. You could, perhaps, call it a thirst for the truth, accepting that someone may be hurt. And I have to add here that I just don’t believe people who urge ‘love’ as if it were as accessible to the heart as money to the hand. This is one area where Taupin has never, from what I can presently recall, slipped in syrup. Even on an early piece like “Border Song” on the Elton John album, he is aware that the love which ends enmities must be sweated and prayed for. Perhaps I shall come to that in a future article. For now, we have the powerful and almost transcendent close of side one: “Tell me when the Whistle Blows” and “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”.

“Whistle Blows” is a story of the country boy going back home for a visit: “And I still feel the need of your apron strings once in a while”. The London railway is seedy, and he himself feels like “a black sheep going home”. Yet, he’s drawn back, and wonders whether the “street kids (will) remember”, whether he can still play pool like he used to, and whether “this country kid (has) still got his soul”. I hear something big in the music, rather as if Elton John also related to it, although it’s really Bernie’s story. What I hear in it, and in its inspired string arrangement, is “moving on to the moment of truth”, if I can put it that way. Has he changed? Who is he now? How will others, his family and his peers receive him? What it comes down to, perhaps, is this: has he been true to himself?

Perhaps questioning yourself is always the first step to seeing yourself, and thus to self-knowledge. This song is Taupin’s record of questioning himself. Great as this song is, it’s greatest value perhaps, is to set the stage and open the curtain for what may be the strongest song this duo ever produced: “Someone Saved my Life Tonight”. On the record, this track closes side 1 with the closure of a red curtain at intermission; and these two tracks are balanced by the last two tracks on side 2, which reprise them in a different emotional key. If “Whistle Blows” is a story of going back home, “Someone” is the same story, but in tragic-triumphant tones, of returning home, to light from darkness. Just quickly, the loss of the two-side album has not only spelled the effective end of the art of record covers, but has robbed the artiste and their audience of the dramatic opportunity to close one side and open another. This is why the record is different from, and superior to the CD.

The piano and cymbals of “Someone Saved my Life Tonight” take us to a world far from that the black sheep waiting at the station, however near it may be in miles: “When I think of those East End lights, muggy nights, curtains drawn in the little room downstairs.”It is not innocent, and its stolid respectability is barely skin deep. The woman Elton almost married is hardly painted in flattering terms: “Prima donna, lord, you really should have been there; sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair”. He gets drunk so that he can’t hear her, and his friends are as legless as he is. We know that this is all true, and that to escape a marriage he felt he could not disavow, he tried to gas himself, but was saved by Long John Baldry. This is the song of the man who came through:

And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear.
… You nearly had me roped and tied,
Altar bound, hypnotised.
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear,
You’re a butterfly, and butterflies are free to fly,
Fly away, high away … bye, bye!

The lyrics are almost stunning in places: “A slip noose hanging in my darkest dreams. … Just a pawn outplayed by a dominating queen. … Saved in time, thank God my music’s still alive.”

This last line is the key to the album, that music equals life. Yet, as we shall see, there’s more. There is an odd kind of contemplative interlude, where he says “I would have walked head on into the deep end of the river”, almost as if he is somewhere above his body, watching it move. The same disembodied calm possesses the line “They’re coming in the morning with a truck to take me home”, the line which formally links this to “Whistle Blows”. Then the music swells until it is would be too intense to bear but for the band’s masterly restraint: “Someone saved my life tonight, so save your strength and run the field you play alone”.

Bear in mind that this is the man whom Bernie Taupin calls ‘The Captain’. And after Taupin wrote him these lyrics, he set them to music of singular potency and sang them. Somewhere or other, I came across that when it was being recorded, Gus Dudgeon asked Elton to put more emotion into his voice, until Davey Johnstone told him to let up: “he’s singing about an attempted suicide”, or words to that effect. That the Captain should submit himself to the ordeal is significant. It had a life purpose, it was written and recorded for a purpose, for fulfilment, not for money.

This is one of those songs where I feel that although the spirit is never mentioned, yet the music bears within itself something of the sublime. In the first blog, I wrote: “I call the ‘sublime’ that precious, subtle feeling of myself as if on the cusp of touching the mystery of eternity. It is the life of what Gurdjieff called the “higher emotional centre”, and its music is, as it were, music delivered through the flesh, but heard by the ears of the soul. … For example, when I listen, with quiet attention, to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” or “Funeral for a Friend”, I feel that there is something majestic swelling in and above the music, which calls me on and upwards.” And I’m not alone in that.

Now, as mentioned, side two opens with the visceral “Meal Ticket”, but from there, the mood of the record changes. Track two is the startlingly original “Better Off Dead”. Driven by the piano, Elton sounds almost derring-do. If a song were to be written for the Scarlet Pimpernel, this could be it. It’s early morning in the grimy city, people are being arrested as the fag end of the night plays itself out: there’s vandalism, and there’s trouble. And yet, here is life! As in “Someone Saved”, music and life are linked:

‘Cause the steam’s in the boiler, the coal’s in the fire!
If you ask how I am, then I’ll just say ‘inspired’!
If the thorn of the rose is the fire in your side,
Then you’re better off dead and you haven’t yet died.

Life is acknowledged, accepted and affirmed with its thorns and all. The means to affirmation is the music, or to be more precise, the feeling of self which comes through their music. This feeling comes through clearly and warmly on the next track: “Writing”:

Inspiration for navigation of our new found craft.
… Will the things we wrote today sound as good tomorrow?
Will we still be writing in approaching years?
… Don’t disturb us if you hear us trying
To instigate the structure of another line or two,
‘Cause writing’s lightin’ up,
And I like life enough to see it through.

I don’t think the music of this song is particularly wonderful, but it’s pleasant, and it allows one a nice breathing space between the precocity of “Better Off Dead” and the symphonic triumph of “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “Curtains”, which really form one sustained statement. Here, the love we all happen to fall for is their music. Now not everyone writes music, but music here is a symbol of realising one’s potential, and love for what we have made of ourselves.

This is, I think, the manifesto of the album, if it has one. If the music is alive (not prostituted to the highest bidder), if it is your music, and you are true to yourself, everything life sends you can be accepted. We have seen how the preceding songs have provided the material of this ‘manifesto’, and it all comes together now on “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “Curtains”

The song opens with some simple descending piano lines. It’s as if someone has walked into the room. Then Elton starts singing, describing the two of them, late at night on a subway station, tired and aching, but believing that “it’s all worth it, we all fall in love sometimes”. Accidentally or not, Elton’s accent falls equally on the three words “all – worth – it”. Exactly what it conveys, beyond the intuition that ‘it’ is something special, is hard to say; yet I feel meaning in it. Now comes the romance:

Full moon’s bright, starlight filled the evening,
We wrote it, and I played it,
Something’s happened,
It’s so strange this feeling.
Naive notions that were childish,
Simple tunes that tried to hide it.
When it comes, we all fall in love sometime.

The melody is simple, and has a subtle sway which comes more to the fore in the chorus: “Did we, didn’t we, should we, could we …”. The evocation of close-of-day fatigue married with the discovery of the wonders of their “newfound craft”, is as accomplished as it is – to my best knowledge – unique. In a funny way, such is the achievement of this song that there I have very little to say about it. To my ear, at least, these songs of self-knowledge are amongst the greatest songs of the last hundred years, and “We All Fall” is perhaps the jewel in the crown. It segues straight into “Curtains”, once more, a strikingly original song in melody, lyrics and format. Like the total track, it practically has no tunefulness, and yet, as chimes softly toll, its slowly paced incantation gives the lyrics an almost oracular status:

I used to know this old scarecrow,
He was my song, my joy and sorrow.
Cast alone between the furrows
Of a field no longer sown by anyone.

As with the previous song, there are no illusions that everything they wrote was brilliant. Yet, the old scarecrow is not disowned, and in one concise phrase we have a generous spectrum of feeling: “He was my song, my joy and sorrow”. The next words are given poignancy by the bells which have been unobtrusively sounding:

I held a dandelion that said the time had come,
To leave upon the wind, never to return,
When summer burned the earth again.
Cultivate the freshest flower
This garden ever grew.
In between these branches
I once wrote such childish words for you.

We have seen these motifs above, the country imagery, and the naivety of some of their earliest songs. But the themes are now drawn together and bring a coherent, almost convincing power, as Taupin refigures them. We have come now from summers in the saddle to summers which will never be repeated, from aspiration to achieving. Yes, the lyrics were naive:

But that’s okay, there’s treasure children always seek to find,
And just like us, you must have had A Once Upon A Time.

This is an important insight: we can punish ourselves for the mistakes of childhood and adolescence, but we were learning and, we can punish ourselves beyond any sane reason for our ignorance. This understanding is allowed its full weight by the evenly chanted spell which Elton John casts. Finally, there is a lengthy “outro” in which Elton and the vocalists compete in bursts of “o-o-o-o-o” and “lum-de-dum-de-day-do” while the drums rumble and the bells ring. No wonder Elton John’s output went into a slump after this. Where else could he go? If it is a law that every force has an equal and opposite reaction, then the law applies to output (which makes me think of how the Beatle’s greatest triumphs, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper were followed by the mediocre Magical Mystery Tour, and the splendid John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine by the barely listenable Some Time in New York City).

Captains Fantastic is the most perfectly executed concept album I have ever heard, forming a satisfying thematically unified whole. I mean that it makes a better album because, being integrated, it leaves one with a sense of the whole which rounds out any uneven spots along the way. It’s as if the weak points are effaced by the strengths, because after the title track, no song is beginning from zero point. There is a building, an accumulation, and it’s all gathered and harvested in the almost spectacularly brilliant “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” and “Curtains”, two limbs of one musical statement.

More than I can recall in popular music, John and Taupin demonstrate the continuity between childhood and adulthood, acknowledge it, and understand that with the development there come also lawful changes. It is an album of metamorphosis. Although it’s never stated, there is something of the story of the Ugly Duckling here about Elton John: the nerd who grows up to reveal a soul of heroic steel.

The album is a statement of metamorphosis: the album cover, the work of Alan Aldridge and Harry Willcock, but conceived by Taupin, I believe, evokes a world of chimeras, unearthly combinations and familiar monstrosities. Once again, I have reason to mourn the passing of the album cover. Perhaps if CDs could be released within record sleeves? It is a manifesto of metamorphosis, because the message is that only if you are true to yourself and do not compromise on the music inside you (whatever form that music takes) can you realise your potential. This message is rather more explicitly developed on The Captain and the Kid, so I’m fortunate to have the advantage of hearing that music in my head as I consider this one.

While Captain Fantastic is about the lives of John and Taupin, it is also of almost universal relevance: it deals with ambition, love of life, sacrifice, great sadness, triumph, realism, creation, manipulation, excess, generosity of spirit, perseverance, and human existence. Ultimately, everyone can relate to its forceful artistic statement that life is worth living, despite the pain. And the statement is put all the more powerfully for not being put directly. If you let the music in, the enlightenment rises upon you, in all its splendour, and lives inside your feeling. Considering Captain Fantastic from that perspective, it’s clear why it is, at least in conception, superior to Yellow Brick Road.

But that’s not all. When I said that the message is that life is worth living, despite the pain, I think that there’s something else implied. And that is that you have to make it worth living. I would say that an aim is needed, and in Gurdjieff’s terms, this would be an aim to discover and develop your essential individuality. In Taupin’s terms, speaking about Elton and himself, it was the development of their musicianship. When he said “thank God my music’s still alive”, what was his highest gratitude for: himself or his muse? And yet, perhaps the two come down to the same thing.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin

====================================
Joseph Azize has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

November 11, 2009 at 2:56 pm

John Lennon: Essence & Reality Part 14: “Tennessee” and “Real Love”

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

Lennon 1980

John Lennon

Tennessee_Williams

Tennessee Williams

Lennon took a rather high view of the artist’s role and mission in society. He not only preached it, he indulged himself (and his second wife) in living the life of the socially-conscious avant-garde artist, and living it rather expansively. There was a rationale, if not an ideology behind it. One could conceive Lennon producing a manifesto to the effect that the role of the artist is to animate people by mediating a cultural influence, and, in rare cases, at the tip of the flower of culture, a spiritual influence. This influence comes through in the artist’s work, but as the Lennons saw “art” as a river without banks, it also flowed through their lives. If artists have the privilege of being opinion makers, leaders and teachers, there are also responsibilities and prices. Artists are responsible to use their public profile to spread a positive message. But this profile exacts a price, the notorious down-side of living in the public eye, and being vulnerable to misunderstanding and abuse, especially from the jackals of the media.

As one would expect, Lennon’s relationship with his public and journalists was highly charged and strongly polarised in both directions – attraction and repulsion. He wanted people to love not just his work but also himself. Sometimes this was manifested in absurd extremes of self-importance, as, for example, when returning his MBE in protest to the Palace, he cited as one of his reasons that “Cold Turkey” had slipped down the charts. Even if this was meant to be humorous, it was a significant humour, because it is spun out of nothing but vanity. I doubt that it would occur to the average person to suppose that Her Majesty, or even the government of the UK, could have done anything about chart performance of 45 rpm records, let alone be rebuked for not having taken measures to ensure that “Cold Turkey” peaked at the metaphorical Everest. Much as I admire Lennon, he himself was the only butt of that joke, if indeed it was a joke. It was egoism to a delusional degree; and part of the reason I do admire him is because eventually took himself in hand and become humbler.

This conception of the artist’s noble social calling is a contributing explanation of many if not most of Lennon’s more bizarre actions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as the bed-ins. They said that they knew that they were going to get publicity whatever they did, and decided to use it in a manner which they saw as positive. We all see the point they were trying to make: the desire for peace should be a major value in everyone’s real life, and not just a camouflage for a profound apathy, or a tonic to placate the last remaining vestiges of conscience while engaging in war. At the time, important nations in the Western world were fighting the war in Vietnam, which, for everything I can see, was not a just war. Those who resisted the war must have felt frustrated to a point of madness. However, the self-importance and extremity of John and Yoko’s actions were of doubtful value, they were perhaps even counter-productive. A more measured protest, I suspect, would have been more effective. I think that, at that point and until his 1975 reunion with her, John and Yoko were so addicted to publicity and preaching that they did not consider that the wrong type of publicity could do damage to their causes.

After the tour de force of raw revelation which was the John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band album, Lennon cut the Imagine album. He once described the title track, his hymn for a believing atheism, as “sugar-coated”. After its critically acclaimed predecessor, yes “Imagine” does sound rather tailored for radio. And its sales far surpassed the previous one’s, which will not have displeased Lennon. It is
possible to entertain and spread a positive message at the same time. In itself that is not a serious problem: from what I can hear the very best music is played over radio together with everything else. Having fame and solo success, Lennon wanted to use it, and he and Yoko reverted to their favoured style: aggressive and preachy. And so they came to produce the disastrous Some Time in New York City album. Its chart and sales failure deeply upset Lennon, who was always competing with other musicians, especially, of course, Paul McCartney. I never heard, however, that he had acknowledged the record’s patent artistic failure.

But Lennon, being Lennon, could not sit still for long. Three years later, if you can credit it, these are lyrics Lennon was working on in the mid-70s, for a song in honour of Tennessee Williams, which showed how far he had come from the strident days of Some Time in New York City:

Tennessee, O Tennessee, what you’ve shown to me:1
Your words like water, pure and clear.
The sadness of your soul reveals the music of this sphere,
Conceal it behind your spirit mind, your poet’s love and feel.2

If I hadn’t heard Lennon singing these words, I wouldn’t have believed that he had written them, because nothing I’ve read about Lennon (and I’ve read whatever I can get my hands on) discloses the least reason to think that Lennon entertained such an exalted opinion of Williams. Lennon never finished this song, although he spent a lot of time working on it. When Lennon writes about “your words like water, pure and clear”, it is hard not to think of this of a case as one soul calling to another like soul, because Lennon too, aimed at clarity and directness.

On one take of “Tennessee”, the one I’ve most often heard, the opening verse is:

America, America, your heroes are alive.
Your faded men and glory will survive.
The madness of your soul supplies the all-consuming fire,
Beneath your spreaded chestnut lies A Streetcar Named Desire.

As with “Instant Karma!”, the writing is so intense, it is difficult to digest it. The final verse is no less compressed:

Tennessee, O Tennessee, your southern bell will ring.
Music travelled far from New Orleans.
Sling an arrowed mirror in the magic of your dreams
Reflect echoed harmony of the naked human being.
Reflect echoed harmony of the cold and lonely naked human being.

I am indebted to Peter Van Schie’s “Between the Lines” page for the lyrics. I must admit I could not make them all out from the recording. I have also heard another version of the song, where Lennon sings “Memory, O memory, release me from your spell”, and says that “today is really all I need to know”. I wonder whether Lennon wasn’t concerned that a song of homage to Tennessee Williams (who was then still alive and being covered in glory) would sound a little strange, and tried to find other lyrics. But these words, in homage to Williams and to the USA, are the only ones which work for me.

And they do work. The sentiments are so strange and almost forced as to be unsettling: what does it mean to sling an arrowed mirror, let alone to do the slinging in the magic of someone’s dreams? Yet, the anthemic quality of the music, the solemn almost gospel piano, and the patent unforced sincerity in his voice produce, in my opinion, one of Lennon’s greatest achievements. If Yoko Ono is reading this blog, it is the ideal moment for her to release every available version of this jewel, and in return I shall see to it that masses are offered for her and her intentions in every cathedral where I can have incense burned.

One of the important points here is that he seems to have learned something from Tennessee Williams: remember, Lennon’s opening sentiment is “Tennessee, O Tennessee, what you’ve shown to me” (my emphasis). What I think he learnt is that it is possible for the artist to be a poet, and to have a “spirit mind”, and to show people what their lives are like, without hopelessly antagonizing them and ridiculing himself as a fool.

Of course, in the past, Tennessee Williams had suffered more than his fair share of muck-throwing, and Lennon doubtless knew this. But by the mid 70s, Williams had come through, and his star had risen, fixed to if not in the constellation of the revered Marlon Brando (who had starred in the famous film version of A Streetcar Named Desire) and many other major stars with real credibility (e.g. Orson Welles) who had appeared in film versions of his plays. In his ability, in his mastery of his craft, his public penetration, in his history as a subject of abuse, and in his hoped for rehabilitation as an American icon, Lennon partly identified with Williams. Why else would he twice speak of Williams as producing “music”? One can wonder, too, whether Williams’ homosexuality and consequent outsider status may not also have appealed to Lennon.

But I think that the almost startling intensity of this song, and perhaps the fact that it was never completed and released, is eloquent of Lennon’s personal life in the last six years of his life. The significant elements are that Lennon sings of William’s words being “like water, pure and clear”, of the sadness of his soul, that this sadness reveals the “music of this sphere” (which I take to mean that as an artist he had access to higher level of insight), and that Williams could “conceal” the raw perception by virtue of his spirit mind of the love and feeling of a poet. All of these points are important. Lennon stated in one of his last interviews that many people were discomfited when he sang about himself, but if he made it a third person saga, such as Tommy, Ziggy Stardust or Sadie Schmuck (so it sounded to me), that could be accepted.

Could it be that at this point of his life, Lennon was starting to realise that sugar coating could be quite a useful commodity for a pill-maker? Sometimes I think that the vital fact is that both Williams and Lennon were appealing to America. Williams seems to me to have cherished an almost idolatrous love of the USA, after all, he changed his first name to “Tennessee”. But, it is also reasonable to suggest that Lennon’s reference to the country cannot be lightly dismissed. Lennon calls America by name, twice, almost like Elijah summoning the dead to rise. He boldly declares, prophet-like, that “your faded men and glory will survive.” By now the Vietnam war had been lost, and I think that this is Lennon’s theme. But he is not hooting in triumph: did he not mean that although he had opposed the war, he had never opposed the country and its people? He adored America, and he worshipped it partly because “the madness of (its) soul supplies (an) all-consuming fire,” and Lennon wanted fire (as perhaps we all do at some deep level). Be that as it may, the song abounds with soul, love and the value of honesty.

In these lyrics, Lennon see humanity on the slab, as it were, and declares that what Williams “reflects” and “echoes” is accurate. Lennon endorses Williams’ vision that on the marble is “the cold and lonely naked human being”. Can there be any doubt that Lennon saw himself and everyone he knew in Williams’ lines?

Incidentally, two images from this song were also found on the Walls and Bridges album. First, the liquid image (“all we need is water … cool … clear … water!) also recurs in “Old Dirt Road”, which he co-wrote with Nilsson not long before he began working on this song. Second, the “mirror in the magic of your dreams” reminds me of “# 9 Dream”, and the line “through the mirror go round”. Indeed, that song with its references to magic and spirits is close to “Tennessee”, in that both are visionary recitals.

This leads me, at last!, to the chief point of this blog, and that is this: while it is easy to criticise Lennon for not living his philosophy of love, he was, in my view, trying to transfer what he felt deeply as a reality in one state to his life when in another state. The higher, and truer state was, for Lennon, the one he experienced making and writing music. And yet he did not despise the world. Consider these words from the matchless “Real Love”, which he was working on about the same time as “Tennessee”:

All my little plans and schemes pass like some forgotten dream.
Seems that all I really was doing was waiting for you.
Just like little girls and boys playing with their little toys.
Seems like all we really were doing was waiting for love.
No need to be alone, no need to be alone.
It’s ree-yal love, it’s re-e-e-e-eal, yes it’s ree-yal love, it’s re-e-e-e-eal.
… No need to be afraid, no need to be afraid.
Thought I’d been in love before, but in my heart I wanted more …

Like “Tennessee”, the piano version has the simple dignified quality of the best of church music. The film “John Lennon: Imagine” opens with him playing it on acoustic guitar. Each has a disarming directness about it, and the Beatles’ edition from the third volume of the Anthology has an energy which adds an endearing vim, redolent to me of the early classics “I Want to Hold your Hand”, “She Loves You”, “I Feel Fine”, and so on. “Real Love” could, I think, well have fitted onto Rubber Soul or Revolver.

These lyrics, seemingly so naive, yet reveal so much: his plans and schemes have vanished like the merest of dreams. The occupations with which he kept himself so terribly busy were the pleasant bubbles of childhood. By stressing as he does that he has found real love, he is stating that there is an unreal love. He had always known it was possible, he says. It is as if he had been fooling himself. But no more. Beyond shadows to realities, as so many have said in different ways.

This, I think, is the key to both songs. Lennon was questing for the road to reality, and sometimes he found his feet on it. The way to the road lay, for him, through art and through love. So Lennon had had glimpses of this, but how to make it a part of his life? In a way, I feel that this was the theme of Lennon’s life and striving. What he wanted was reality.

Sometimes Lennon knew that reality lies not in personalities (as he sang in “God”), or in occupations or callings (such to the avant-garde), but in a change our internal states. As he sang in “Revolution” to all those agitating for political change, “you better free your mind instead”. But precocious as this understanding was, Lennon often forgot it. In fact, even when he wrote “Revolution” a part of him was not convinced of it.

One of Gurdjieff’s great insights was that we can know the truth, but the level of truth we can know depends upon our state. We cannot really speak of ourselves in an absolute way: to be more precise, and so freer of illusion, there is myself in this state, and myself in any one of the endless number of states we move from. Our state is always changing, but the range through which it changes can be higher or lower. The speed with which our state can fall is so bewildering that it can lead to despair. But with time, one can learn to raise one’s state just as quickly. And with time, too, our state will cease to fall so low as to sink into danger.

So that was John Lennon: he knew that there were certain states where love was real. That is what he wrote of in “Real Love”, and it supplied the fire that he then projected onto the USA and one of its greatest playwrights. The tragedy was that he was murdered while he was learning to bring something of this state to all the rest of his life, and to spread “The Word”, as he sang on Rubber Soul.

Note: Since I wrote the piece on “Imagine”, I have come to see one important matter: the song is actually addressed to believers. The famous opening words “Imagine there’s no heaven” can only make sense if spoken to those who believe in the existence of a heaven. “Heaven” is often a way of referring to “God”, just as “the White House” can often mean the President of the USA. Throughout the addresses those who also believe in hell and religion. Lennon does not outright invited us to imagine no God, but it comes to the same thing.

So what follows from this? To my mind it strengthens the impression that “the song aspires to ideals usually associated exclusively with religion.” Lennon was correct to say in 1980 that he was a religious person. It strengthens my sense that a spiritual or even mystic interpretation of Lennon’s life and work is fitting, and is potentially productive of good clear light.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
27 September 2009

Joseph Azize has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.

The third book, George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.

Share this:
Share
StumbleUpon
Print
Reddit
Email
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google +1
Like this:
Like Loading...

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

October 19, 2009 at 2:54 pm

Posted in John Lennon: Essence and Reality Part 14: “Tennessee” and “Real Love”, JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Tagged with 'Real Love', A Streetcar Named Desire, addiction to publicity, America, “I Feel Fine”, “I Want to Hold your Hand”, “Imagine”, “She Loves You”, “The Word”, Between the Lines, Cold Turkey, Gurdjieff, Instant karma, John Lennon, JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE, Marlon Brando, Nilsson, Old Dirt Road”, Peter Van Schie, Plastic Ono Band, Revolution, Rubber Soul, Some Time in New York City, Tennessee Williams, Vietnam war, Walls and Bridges album, Yoko Ono

JOHN LENNON 13: Instant Karma

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

=============================
Instant karma

John Lennon: Essence and Reality
Part 13: “Instant Karma!”

“I’m only beginning to understand what this record was about”, said Lennon in 1972, more than two years after it had been released. I am sure that Lennon could have said the same thing in 1980, the last year of his life. “Instant Karma!” is, I feel, a song so large that it is difficult to take it in. I mean this the way that sometimes, by grace, one has a moment where one is struck with the reality of something: an animal, a person, the sky, the clouds, the wind, a reflection, or a street sign. Buddhists have referred to these illuminations as seeing the “suchness” of reality. It is a big thing when one can sense the “suchness” of one’s own reality, because to the extent that I can, I am able at will to sense myself in relation to other realities.

Such experiences need to be borne, meaning that they involve both “birth” and “bearing”: it is as if a new man is coming to birth, and an inner health or strength is needed to be able to bear the vision. When, in time, such moments have brought some quality of soul to birth, they can be supported for a longer period, so that the soul can do more than blink in the sunlight for a moment or two. The results of the experiences then work together, as Gurdjieff said, and one can even perhaps sense the face of God in creation, at once instantly immediate, yet also transcendent.

We shall return to this at the end of this piece, but I have said this much now because, grandiloquent as it may sound, I feel that some sort of experience along these lines is needed to receive the impact of “Instant Karma!”. Forget words like “heavy”, although for my money, it is far heavier than anything Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple or Judas Priest ever conceived. It may well be the most powerful song of the rock and roll era. For spiritual magnitude, the best polyphonic Western music to which I could compare it, would be the “Requiem Aeternam”, “Kyrie Eleison” and “Dies Irae” from Mozart’s Requiem, where, of course, he availed himself of words from the sacred tradition.

The secret of the power of “Instant Karma!” is not far to seek: the music and the delivery correspond with raw fidelity to its urgent message that judgment is sure, and glory is possible; that as we sow, we reap; and that we are responsible not only for our own lives but also for the lives of all those we affect and who we can affect.

The production of this song is now legendary: Lennon awoke on 27 January 1970, wrote it on the piano that morning, recorded it that evening with George Harrison (guitar), Phil Spector (producer), Klaus Voorman (bass) and Alan White (drums). On 6 February, it was available in stores, and on 11 February they performed it on Top of the Pops. For Lennon, the entire process was immediate, and this comes through in his voice and in the playing. Lennon keenly felt that he could, and even should, communicate directly with his audience. This idea was encouraged by Yoko Ono, whose own art sought, among other things, to forge an imaginative partnership between singer and audience.

Part of their thinking was that by producing topical singles like “Give Peace A Chance”, “Power to the People” and “Karma!” with a minimum of fuss, music could be as alive to the moment as a newspaper. Personally, I am not fond of “Give Peace A Chance”; to my ear it aims high but delivers low, especially in the verses, which are self-important when not meaningless. Yet, formidable critics such as Johnny Rogan relish it, so perhaps there is something in it I cannot hear. However, in the case of “Karma!”, I agree with the critics that Lennon struck gold, if not platinum. Like newspapers announcing the outbreak of war or the signing of peace, this is a bulletin of permanent value.

Two steely notes on piano into the first words, delivered by a man who sounds like he means them: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you!” This means, of course, that the results of what we have done remain with us. It means that there is justice, and that we will get our just deserts. For most of us, the outcome will be mixed. As Newman, I think, once remarked, most of us are worse than we could be but better than we might have been. And so it is that for almost each one of us, the reckoning will be bitter-sweet. As an aside, this fact of life demonstrates the sheer good sense and realism of the teaching of Purgatory – a teaching shared by Gurdjieff and mainstream Christians. This is yet another reason why, the more I study Gurdjieff, I see the main influence on him as being Greek Christianity, which holds the concept of Purgatory while rejecting that Latinate word.

This is not such a detour from Lennon as may seem, for in “Karma!”, the law of cause and effect works as a sort of Purgatory. First, in the verses, there comes the judgment, and then in the chorus, the exaltation. This, it seems to me, is how the song hangs together. The verses are chiefly, but not entirely, given over to warning and admonition, until they invite the addressees to believe that they are superstars – if they believe it:

Instant karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right on the head:
You better get yourself together,
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead.
What in the world are you thinking of?
Laughing in the face of love!
What on earth are you trying to do?
It’s up to you – yeah you!

Instant karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna look you right in the face,
Better get yourself together, darling,
Join the human race.
How in the world are you going to see,
Laughing at fools like me?
Who on earth do you think you are?
A superstar?
Well alright, you are!

And then comes the chorus, almost deafening in its intensity:

Well, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Well we all shine on,
Ev’ryone! come on!

The third verse adds force to the message, by declaring that we cannot possibly be here to spend our lives suffering. And then, asks Lennon, why do you limit yourself to one small place, one groove, one role, when you are made for greater things? He says:

Instant karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right off your feet
Better recognize your brothers,
Everyone you meet.
Why in the world are we here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear.
Why on earth are you there,
When you’re everywhere?
Come and get your share.

Never before have I quoted much by way of repetitions, but I do so here so that one can at least see on the printed page how the hammer strikes the anvil:

Well, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah, we all shine on,
On and on and on, on and on.
Well, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.

And then, in a masterful touch, at about 2’ 56”, the song softens rather than fades out:

Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah, we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah, we all shine on …

Why masterful? Because the power is not lessened. One hears the decrescendo as a controlled performance. I repeat, it does not sound to me like a gradual fade: at the word “like”, Lennon lowers his voice for the rest of the piece. To me, the effect produced is, fancifully perhaps, as if the moon and the stars did not fade so much as they withdrew further back into the deeps of the sky.

My interpretation of the song as referring to judgment, justice, and mixed deserts, at least has this to commend it: it makes sense of the otherwise inexplicable gap between the condign punishment promised in the verses, and the celebratory chant of the chorus. Otherwise, surely, it would be contradictory to hurl thunderbolts, but then announce a general human apotheosis.

Commentators have noted that the chorus is based on the “Three Blind Mice” motif of three descending notes, which Lennon favoured in some of his greatest works, such as “All You Need Is Love”, “Imagine” and the poignant “My Mummy’s Dead”. The simplicity and the endless interest of the theme seem to me to be typical of Lennon’s genius. But there are more than just tricks in this song: there is depth. As Lennon explained later on:

… it occurred to me that karma is instant, as well, as it influences your past life or your future life. There really is a reaction to what you do now. That’s what people ought to be concerned about.

This insight that our actions affect the past as well as the future is an extraordinary one, involving as it does, the understanding that in each moment, our actions not only comprise the present, they determine the future by laying down the tracks upon which it will run, and they are the ever-changing connection with the past, for one knows the past by its effect, and we are that. To try and explain this, one could take Gurdjieff’s concept of “repairing the past”. I have dealt with this in George Adie, but to give an example which may clarify things: let us say that we have a neurosis, and we can say that the neurosis can be traced back to our parents’ behaviour. One could then say, “what the parents did was bad: it caused this neurosis”. But if the neurotic is healed, so that he is no longer neurotic, or at least not such a neurotic as he was, then one could say: “what the parents did was bad, but not as bad as we first thought, because the neurosis it caused was curable.” And so on: in this way we repair our past and even our parents’ mistakes, which is, as Gurdjieff said, an honour.

And so Lennon had this tremendous insight, that by taking action now we can remedy the crimes and errors of the past and build a better future. Taken as a whole, the song is a century of thought and wisdom in three minutes and about 23 seconds. It takes us from judgment and condign punishment to justification and exaltation.

But there is one more matter to mention before leaving: karma. Is karma in fact the notion of cause and effect, that one is one’s past and cannot escape it? What karma initially was, I don’t know, but Gurdjieff had an interesting view of it, retained (so far as I know) only in Ferapontoff’s Constantinople notes. This perspective states that the doctrine of karma was originally this:

Absolute conditioning of the smallest action. You have thought so far that you can do something. You can do absolutely nothing. You must understand that you are not, that you can change nothing (p. 29).

But, as with Lennon’s admonition that instant karma will hit us right in the face, this grim perspective is not the whole of the story, because if actions are totally conditioned, understanding is not:

To understand the situation is already a great thing and it is the first necessary step. Such understanding already includes a certain freedom. … What you call inaction would have been precisely a real possibility of action. In doing one must not create a new Karmic chain. … Unity means isolation from karma (pp. 29-30).

Now this was not quite Lennon’s understanding of karma, but it is, I think, a fuller one, and corresponds more perfectly to reality. We can see how the concepts are related. If karma is the conditioning of even the smallest action, then each action is the result of the past. If some freedom from karma is achieved by not starting a new karmic chain, then there is some sense in speaking of “good karma” and “bad karma”. But it is not so simple a thing as people imagine: good karma consists in consciousness, being, and doing for an aim, without identification. Bad karma is mechanical doing. So, in the end, while Lennon may not have understood all of this, he grasped, and he felt, that we are as we act, and this is a necessary corrective to an unbalanced emphasis on “being”.

Now, to return again to where we started, I had noted that even Lennon did not understand “Instant Karma!”. He was fortunate that something very fine came through him, that he was faithful to it, and served it. Something the same is possible when we have these moments of suchness. If I can sense my presence, I can bear the moment. If I cannot, it unsettles me, which is what I think happened with Van Gogh: he did not possess the inner strength to sustain what he saw. It is not enough to express these illuminations, although that certainly will help. They must be lived. And so the question is, then, how do we live?

This is an appropriate time to stop, but I shall pursue this in the next blog, when I look at two of Lennon’s uncompleted masterpieces, “Tennessee” and “Real Love”.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

The third book, George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.

=============================

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

August 3, 2009 at 7:05 pm

JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE & REALITY Part 12: “Cleanup Time”

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

—————————————

lennondoublefantasy 2

John Lennon: Essence and Reality

Part 12: “Cleanup Time”

“Once I accepted the reality of the situation, something greater than me took over and all of a sudden I lost my fear.” Thus spake Lennon in 1980. In this blog, we’ll look at why Lennon said this, and its context, both personal and musical. They’re good words to start with, because they suggest the largeness of Lennon’s endeavour when he was working on Double Fantasy, from which album comes “Cleanup Time”.

Melodically, “Cleanup Time” is by no means Lennon’s strongest song, but it’s one of his most lovable, and it’s deceptively deep, at least in my view. I recall that at one time I was taking singing lessons from a pleasant, well-fed nun. She was treating me, musically that is, to a diet of her favourites, which were mostly Broadway standards. One day she very kindly asked me to think about what I might like to learn, and so the next week I brought along the sheet music for “Cleanup Time”. She had never heard it before: neither had her pianist. But as she came to know the song, Sister started to tap her fingers, and then her feet, and soon she started to do a little jig. “This is a joy”, she said. And that sounds right.

I think of “Cleanup Time” as being one of the “Yoko Ono songs”. It not only paints a humorous thumb-nail portrait of her, but it’s inspired by her approach to life: hard-headed and romantic by turns, with positive affirmation, and lots of talk of magic. This is part of Yoko’s worldview, that to speak and think and to imagine positively is to make a positive future. She sees the connection between imagination (what I might call “creative visualisation”) and reality. This willing of the positive into reality is what she calls magic, which is why in “You’re the One” from Milk and Honey she describes John and herself as “a wizard and a witch”. This belief that we are making our present and future right now, and can make them better right now is an example of “instant karma”.

Now to apply this to “Cleanup Time”. At the outset of the song, as a guitar picks at a loose line, Lennon seems to mutter an incantation. It sounds to me like: “Bubble, bubble … toil”, a reference to the famous spell from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with its refrain “Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” As Lennon’s mumbling fades out, the band comes together and sweeps us into a burbling brook of sound, while Lennon begins, half speaking rather than singing:

Moonlight on the water, sunlight on your face,

You and me together, we are in our place.

The gods are in the heavens, the angels treat us well,

Oracle has spoken, we cast the perfect spell.

The queen is in her counting house, counting out the money,

The king is in the kitchen, making bread and honey.

No friends and yet no enemies, absolutely free.

No rats aboard the magic ship of perfect harmony.

And then with a surge of energy, and even a bit of growl on the words “now” and “let”, he sings:

Now it begins, let it begin: Cleanup time!

Cleanup time! Well! Well! Well!

However far we travel, Wherever we may roam,

The centre of our circle will always be our home.

Cleanup time! Cleanup time!

The third verse is shorter, as, instead of the last couplet, a saxophone plays a solo. It is worth listening to it through headphones: the musicians clearly had a lot of fun, and the guitars, in particular, emit almost random screeches in the background, but the randomness of the sound has an effect that is complementary to the song. The piece is only just under three minutes long, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and as it is, it is totally satisfying.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, it is odd that Sean isn’t mentioned. I don’t feel that he’s excluded, and he does have a song all to himself, so to speak, later on the album, in “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”. But still, the omission is odd: I can’t imagine that Lennon left Sean out because he felt that Julian might be hurt.

The real issue is, when Lennon speaks about, cleaning up, what is being cleaned? I think the answer is a large one: it is their lives. I think he means their drug taking, their approach to each other and to others, the food they were eating, and even financially, that they were getting their act together. So the references to the king and queen were humorous but it was the humour of a happy truth. Then, by implication, he was perhaps admitting that in the past he may have forgotten that his home was central, but now he would not. The way he sings “Now” when he sings “Now it begins” demonstrates that he felt he had come to a significant and fresh point. About this time he was writing a song with the words “life begins at 40″, because that was how he felt. Further, the opening references to moonlight and sunlight remind me of his insight in “Oh! My Love” into the transformative power of the simplest and clearest impressions (see the first Lennon blog). He is to remain centred in reality, and reality, as we saw with “God”, he identified with “Yoko and me”. This is why he sang: “You and me together, we are in our place.”

Doggett sees a little dig at Yoko and her tarot readers and psychics in Lennon’s reference to an oracle and a spell, (The Art and Music of John Lennon, 297): I must say, I don’t interpret those lyrics that way. Given Lennon’s habit of travelling all over the world in compliance with the advice these people gave Yoko, the lyrics are more likely to be celebratory (he flew to South Africa and then travelled to Bermuda in accordance with “psychic” advice: see John Lennon: The Life, Philip Norman, 789). Over and above that, I don’t sense any irony here. However, Doggett is correct to see in the reference to the king and queen, an allusion to “Cry, Baby Cry” from The Beatles double album. That song had something magical, perhaps redolent of “Alice in Wonderland”, and that is what I hear here, 12 years later.

It is funny, but while the line about having neither friend nor enemy and being absolutely free is bracing in its clarity and cleanness, I don’t believe it expressed the whole truth, and I never did, even before the assassination. Yet, I feel that this is one aspect of the truth, and was Lennon’s genuine experience: he felt that he and Yoko made a self-sufficient pair. It smacks to me of his words from “In My Life” about how his dear memories lose their meaning when he thinks of love as “something new”. It isn’t cold: there is something impartial about it, but still incomplete. The words “magic ship of perfect harmony” may even have been inspired by an event which occurred not long before the writing of this song.

In 1980, Lennon made an important sailing trip to Bermuda. I will not attempt to retell the account told by Chris Hunt (“Just Like Starting Over: The Recording of Double Fantasy”, first published in Uncut Legends, December 2005, by Chris Hunt, retrieved from http://www.chrishunt.biz/features26.html @ 16 May 2009), but it is well worth reading. If, as it seems, the story is true, then when Lennon sailed to Bermuda, he alone of the crew, was well enough to assist the captain get through a six day storm (the story is accepted by Philip Norman). The captain quoted Lennon as saying the following about his feelings when he (i.e. the captain) was obliged to leave Lennon alone to steer the boat:

Once I accepted the reality of the situation, something greater than me took over and all of a sudden I lost my fear. I actually began to enjoy the experience, and I began to sing and shout old sea shanties in the face of the storm, feeling total exhilaration. I had the time of my life. … I was so centred after the experience at sea that I was tuned in to the cosmos – and all these songs came!

Little wonder that the captain went on to say that when he returned to the deck several hours later, Lennon was “just enraptured”. Interestingly, Lennon was also supposed to have said that the reason he seemed immune to sea-sickness, when three experienced sailors were laid up with it, was that as a former heroin addict who had made it through withdrawal, he had learned to control his urge to vomit.

And I think this is the clue to the deep if subdued joy of “Cleanup Time”. Lennon had been through some difficult times, some hard times, and some dirty times. But he had come through. When I first heard Double Fantasy, I formed the view that Lennon had started writing songs more radically original than any in the history of modern pop: he had started writing the songs of the householder. This is Gurdjieff’s way of referring to the person who is on a road of spiritual development simply by their manner of living ordinary life.

The concept of the householder is quite important: Gurdjieff said that the spiritual way could not begin at a lower level than that of ordinary and competent life (Miraculous 154). This means that unless you can organize your life: your food, clothing and shelter, in a competent manner, and care for your children if you have any, your chance of organizing anything at a higher level is nil. Of course, this is a principle: there are also issues of accident and even fate to take into account, so that someone, anyone, of whatever level, living in Afghanistan, may find circumstances overwhelming. But Gurdjieff’s valuation of the householder is inimical to the romance of the “bohemian” (Miraculous 362-4), or as we might say today, the “beatnik” or “hippie”. Bohemians and hippies, according to Gurdjieff would be “tramps” (people with no values). Equally remote from the spiritual way are “lunatics”, people with wrong values. Interestingly, Gurdjieff said that we have elements of all three within ourselves, but there is still room for one type to predominate.

Lennon did not put it into these words: so far as I know he had not read or even heard of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. But if he had not, this would make his achievement all the greater. It would mean that he had tried a certain way of life, found it failing, and amended his ways. This is why I think of some of the songs from those last years as being “householder songs”. This concept also shows the significance of how Yoko and he became more and more concerned to eat nourishing food, and the importance of Lennon’s learning to prepare brown rice and bake good bread. These are good, simple householder tasks.

There is much in the later Lennon which can be explained from this perspective, but I’ll close with his statement “something greater than me took over and all of a sudden I lost my fear.”

There is something greater than us, and it’s manifestation in our lives is related to our acceptance of the situation, whatever that situation may be. It is, ultimately, related to accepting that we are as we are. But that does not mean congratulating ourselves, for as we are we have a possibility of developing, of becoming better, perhaps even more godlike. I would say that a good first step is to remember ourselves more often and more deeply, and perhaps this is what Lennon experienced when he spoke of being “so centred”. But self-remembering is only the first step, and few “householders” have ever heard of it or conceived anything like it. No matter, they progress through their own way of life. The goal still abides, the spiritual life, the life grounded in reality for God.

lennon 2 1980

John Lennon 1980

These issues shall all be revisited and new layers of depth will appear. For example, we shall need to consider “Living on Borrowed Time” which also relates to Lennon’s Bermuda experience. But for the next blog, I’ll go back to January 1970 and “Instant Karma!”.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

———————————————

—————————————————

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

May 25, 2009 at 12:04 pm

Posted in JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE & REALITY Part 12: "Cleanup Time", JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Tagged with Cleanup Time, Double Fantasy, Gurdjieff and Householder, John Lennon, John Lennon: The Life, Joseph Azize, Just Like Starting Over: The Recording of Double Fantasy Chris Hunt, Philip Norman, SEan Lennon, The Art and Music of John Lennon Doggett, Yoko Ono

JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE AND REALITY, Part 11: Imagine

JOSEPH AZIZE PAGE

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com
——————————————————————–

john_lennon_imagine_lyrics1

John Lennon: Essence and Reality Part 11: “Imagine”

Lennon was pragmatic enough to know that, at some point, people who seek freedom will need to act. He was sufficiently experienced to know that music can inspire people to act. And he was wise enough to know that the first act to liberation is one of the imagination. Freedom is, first of all, a liberation of consciousness. But freedom for what? All these issues, and more, Lennon addressed in three minutes and six seconds in his tour de force, “Imagine”.

“Imagine” is, without doubt, Lennon’s signature song, his anthem: a call to an idyllic world of benevolence and peace. But every force evokes an opposite reaction, and so does every torch song. “Imagine” is also his most widely detested song because of its opening line “Imagine there’s no heaven”, which effectively, of course, means no Christian god, for as the Lord’s Prayer says, our father is in heaven.

Lennon himself remarked that the song was anti-religion and anti-capitalist, but that it was ‘accepted’ because it was ‘sugar-coated’. And this is largely, although not entirely, true. Many people who cherish it as an anthem do not really think about what the song says, although they understand what it’s about. While the lyrics could hardly be any clearer, the “unspoken lyrics” of the music, to put it that way, are yet clearer and louder. I am not taking a position for or against the song, but an exploration would repay the effort, because there is something very big, even massive, in “Imagine”. I think that people are attracted to this, the big spirit that breathes through the song as a whole.

First of all, some context. The Beatles had split up only about a year before Lennon started working on this song and the album of the same name. His reputation had suffered: for example, he was variously decried as a ratbag, a hypocrite, a fool, and even naive. Oddly, it seems that the accusation of naivety was the one which hurt him the most. People can disagree on morality, or even on what constitutes wisdom or its opposite, but to call someone naive is to deny them adult status, to refuse to take them seriously. I think that we all doubt ourselves, to some extent and in some areas, and so to be mocked out of a fair hearing is painful because it confirms our secret fears, based as they are upon our own criticism of ourselves.

It’s as if we all have a custom made wound between our shoulder blades, and the knife which fits the wound is “ridicule”. Lennon would pretend not to be bothered by it, but he was, and so, thankfully, he stopped performing “bed-ins”, appearing in a bag in the name of “total communication”, or growing his hair for peace. Lennon adopted all the trendy left-wing political postures, and hob-nobbed with the “yippie” Abbie Hoffman and his ilk. Yet, even during this period he produced what is, to my ear, the rock and roll album without parallel, John Lennon /Plastic Ono Band. Despite the excess of one track (“Well, Well, Well”), it is still easily the deepest single piece of music produced in the last 50 years, at least so far as my knowledge extends and my taste discerns (see my blogs on “God” and “Remember”).

But that record had not met with the popular success Lennon believed it deserved, and for which he craved. So he did what he later would when his Some Time In New York City double album was a spectacular flop: he changed tack to something he fancied would be more in tune with the market. After Some Time, he produced Mind Games, which was received with relief, although not the sales he had hoped for. After John Lennon he produced Imagine, and that was a success. The only track on it that most people find hard to listen to today is “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier”, a wailing, indulgent anti-war piece, which thankfully ends side 1, so that in the days of vinyl one could simply lift the needle off early.

Now, I am not saying that the song “Imagine” was insincere, or that it was contrived to meet the market. It in fact has roots deep in Lennon’s artistry, and is his authentic voice. But I think that the song was produced so as to maximize its popular success. One could compare it to “Love” from the John Lennon album. There, the melody is almost achingly beautiful, something Lennon was proudly aware of, and it was given a beautiful production which was simplicity itself, care of none other but Phil Spector, who was celebrated for his large productions. However, it was the sort of treatment which only the cognoscenti would really appreciate: for that type of song, the record buying public tends to prefer strings. And so “Imagine” had strings. But it had more: its very first line, considered apart from its soft musical treatment, was either startling or confronting, depending on your point of view:

Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try;

No hell below us, above us only sky.

Imagine all the people living for today – ah ah, aye.

At the Catholic school I attended at the time of this song’s release, Brother Terence, our class teacher, played us “Imagine” and “Gimme Some Truth” as contemporary songs we could profitably ponder. He was not threatened by any of its concepts, and what is more, he entered into the spirit of the lyrics. The thing was, he said, to actually imagine it. To stop, get other things out of your mind for three minutes, and try to see it. And that really is the song in a nutshell. But let’s go back.

First of all, the piano lead in is stately, even hymnic. It was intended to, and it does have an anthemic quality. On another version, released only posthumously on the four volume Anthology, this aspect is even more strikingly emphasised, because the chief accompanying instrument there is an organ, on which decidedly churchy stops have been pulled. Given the anti-religious sentiments of the lyrics, this is almost ironic. But there is a point to this, because it means that the song aspires to ideals usually associated exclusively with religion. This, I am sure, is true to the paradox of Lennon. In 1980 he told an interviewer (David Shef) that he was a religious person, and went on to say that he had no problems with what Jesus had taught, but that people were mesmerised by Jesus, not his message. Indeed, during that interview Lennon made frequent reference to Jesus, and his miracles such as the loaves and fishes! Lennon was marked by ambiguity and love/hate. In the early 1970s, Lennon was still in two minds as to whether the real issues were political and social, or psychological and perhaps even spiritual. After Mind Games, he would retreat from overtly political statements and concerns, and turn more innerly.

It seems to me that most criticisms of Christianity and Christians, and Lennon’s is no exception, are in fact taking aim at a lack of Christianity, at a failure to live like Christians. With relatively few exceptions, it is not Christianity that people object to but the lack of Christianity, and this is of course harder to accept when there is hypocrisy in the equation. What Lennon is getting at in “Imagine” goes beyond this: he is not attacking Christianity by name, but rather religion and concepts such as God and hell, anything which takes one away from “living for today”, as he puts it. The song goes on to then erase other fixtures of our mental furniture:

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do,

Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too.

Imagine all the people living life in peace.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can.

No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.

Imagine all the people sharing all the world.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.

On a live performance, he would sing in the final verse “a brotherhood and sisterhood of man”. He did not correct his sexism by altering “man” to “people” or something less redolent of machismo.

But all that side of things is a distraction: what is critical about this song is an insight which he took from Yoko Ono, and that is this: envisaging a possibility and imagining its reality are the first steps to making it a reality. This can be a trite statement, but it can also be profound, even revelatory. So many of our limitations are accepted by us simply because we cannot imagine an alternative. It is astounding, even horrifying, in a way, to wake up and realise that we are limited in our reactions and our responses simply because we have never seen anyone react in any other way. That is, we see that “X” always “makes” people get upset, and something in us, something which is so deep as to rarely be in our awareness, has a sense that there would be something wrong if we, too, did not upset when “X” happened. I shall develop this idea further in a future blog, when I deal with “How?”, also from the Imagine album. In “The Daphne Blossom”, also available on this blog by kind permission of Carl Ginsberg, one can read how Ginsberg, a Feldenkreis practitioner, cured a problem George Adie had with swallowing food, by inducing him to imagine the existence of the lung which had been surgically removed almost 40 years earlier: and what is more, it worked, almost like magic.

And perhaps imagination and magic are related. This, I think, makes sense of much of Yoko Ono’s art, although, as I have said before, I do not pretend to understand that redoubtable woman and her approach. Imagination, in the sense of consciously forming an image and introducing it into one’s thought and feeling as an active element, was a stable of her art, as even a cursory glance at her book Grapefruit will show. What Lennon and One were saying is that we receive all sorts of influences through the media and society. Most of these, as the correctly saw, were based on unthinking prejudices and attitudes. Most of these are were needlessly crass and low, hence on “Working Class Hero” from John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band, he sings: “you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see”. But, and this is why Lennon and Ono were so excited, one has a choice: one can choose to look for better influences, and what is more, everyone can create such influences by using their minds creatively.

We are forever manufacturing our own present and future through our imaginations. This, I think, is the essence of what Yoko Ono brought Lennon, and it was a lesson for which he had long ago prepared the ground: see my blog on “There’s A Place”. Any comment on Lennon’s relationship with Ono which does not take this into account, is, in my view, hopelessly superficial.

To return to the metaphor of the magician, the wizard and the witch (as Yoko referred to John and herself on “You’re The One” from Milk and Honey) have to visualize what they desire, but then they have to have sufficient knowledge. Some things can be effected merely by thought: methods of self-suggestion work on this basis. But other things cannot be so easily dealt with: and there is the issue. People who have learned of the power of the mind tend to become overly enthusiastic and imagine that there are no limits to it. This is absurd as imagining that nothing can be effected by creative visualisation. Lennon had some insight into this: he saw that it is not just a case of thinking about something like peace. Lennon realised that it needs to be pictured as a reality, and pictured clearly and distinctly desired. That is why he sang: “some day you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” What cannot be done by parliaments, or United Nations can be done by people: as he sang on “Only People” from Mind Games: “only people know just how to change the world.”

And for what is this freedom desired? So that the world may live as one, sharing the world, in peace. It would be easy to critique this as naive or as amorphous, and to show that belief in heaven, hell and religion are not the problem, but rather, as I have said, lip-service and hypocrisy, that is, insufficient practice of religion. As for the idea that eliminating possessions would also spell the end of greed and hunger – well this is naivety of an almost criminal level. What could Lennon had been thinking? Was he merely reciting hoary old Socialist opium dreams?

But I do not particularly want to take a shot at “Imagine” today. The deficiencies in the lyrics are somewhat made up in the music, and the nobility of what he was aiming at: the transformation of negative emotions into positive, what Gurdjieff called the second conscious shock (see In Search of the Miraculous, p.191). I have no evidence that is even suggestive that Lennon was acquainted with Gurdjieff’s ideas, and yet, that is what I hear in “Imagine”: the conviction that hatred can be transformed through consciousness, and that divisions can be overcome by a positive impulse. All that is lacking is an understanding of the necessity of the first conscious shock: that is, that we cannot bring a conscious influence to our emotions unless we first of all remember ourselves. But Lennon had started to move towards this insight, realizing that for years he had forgotten himself (see the first Lennon blog). And I think that some form of this insight may lie behind the reference to people “living for today”. Is it too hopeful of me to see Lennon saying that we need to be present?

There is far more one could say, but I shall return to what I see as the crucial points in future blogs, where I shall take other songs as my point of departure. But I shall end this one by pointing out elements of continuity and development in Lennon’s artistic career. As has been noticed before, the first words of “Imagine” were foretold, as it were, in “I’ll Get You” from 1963, where Lennon sang: “Imagine I’m in love with you, it’s easy ‘cos I know, I’ve imagined I’m in love with you, many, many, many times before.” (e.g. S. Turner, The Beatles: The Stories behind the Songs 1962-1966). However, what Turner does not note, is that in 1963 Lennon went on to sing: “It’s not like me to pretend …”. In 1971, not so long afterwards, Lennon saw that imagination was a tool in the technology of consciousness.

He had indeed, come a long way. But he had further to go, and in the next blog, I’ll consider one of his final songs, where he showed that, without any doubt, his feet were finding their place on the earth while he had lost nothing of his idealism: “Clean Up Time” from Double Fantasy.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

———————————————

Joseph Azize has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.

The third book, George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.

—————————————————

Written by SOPHIA WELLBELOVED

April 17, 2009 at 3:43 pm

Posted in JOHN LENNON; Part 11: Imagine

Tagged with Abbie Hoffman, Gimme Some Truth, Imagine, John Lennon, John Lennon /Plastic Ono Band, Mind Games, Phil Spector, The Beatles, Yoko Ono

Gurdjieff's teaching: for scholars and practitioners

Posts Tagged ‘John Lennon’

JOHN LENNON: Essence and Reality: Part 20: “STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER”

John Lennon: Part 19: “How?” and “Borrowed Time”

John Lennon: Essence and Reality – Part 18: Jealous Guy

JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE & REALITY: Memory

John Lennon: Essence and Reality Part 15: “Mother”

ELTON JOHN: The Songs of Self-Knowledge (Part 1)

John Lennon: Essence & Reality Part 14: “Tennessee” and “Real Love”

JOHN LENNON 13: Instant Karma

JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE & REALITY Part 12: “Cleanup Time”

JOHN LENNON: ESSENCE AND REALITY, Part 11: Imagine

Pages

Search

Blogroll

Archives

Categories

Meta

Follow “Gurdjieff's teaching: for scholars and practitioners”