The year before the shit hit the NJP fan, the year when Dark Side of the Moon landed in my ten-year-old hands and changed my mind about all I thought I knew about understanding and poetry and such until that point, there was John and Yoko on Mike Douglas. Somehow I watched Mike Douglas, a grownup talk show in the late afternoon. (Somehow, also, I watched the inappropriate-for-kids Love American Style at lunchtime, munching on my pbj as I watched comedy about blow-up dolls, oral, and the like). These two took it over, so to speak, in '72 and I watched it all. The militancy, the guest artists, the staccato explanations of the way things were. And Mike, earnest Mike, watery-eyed, took it all in, as did I. The only way I heard the Beatles music and Lennon was via my older cousins as I was a freakin' kid with no money but an AM radio, cousins, a cast-off manual typewriter from my father in the basement on my grandfather's cast-off carved desk, and daydreams. I loved John before most men I have known (or sort of known) because of his earnest artist demeanour - that what he made is serious so, therefore, what you made is and could be, too. His music went beyond entertainment, became the music of dreams, of psyche, of inspiration, of pain, of all the everyday welts of life. His nose, in my opining, surpasses those of all others and remains the greatest nose that ever breathed upon the earth. His eyes were those that are a surprise, the type that no matter how many times you glance into surprise with their colour and depth. He wrote, drew, protested, loved, and still wanted to, despite the CPW situ and such, remain a pedestrian, someone who could walk in the park and breathe and be. John Lennon's legacy is to remind all artists that it's not only important to make work and be true to the muse, but to use the muse to push social change, what is good for the world, a goal that surpasses those flimsy goals of most politicos and so-called spirituals.
All we are saying is give peace a chance, he wrote as an artist, he said, to update the message of peace beyond We Shall Overcome.
Imagine.

Imagined Love.