[klaatumail] Re: John Lennon
- From: "Leslie M. Kuretzky" <28286574881@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: klaatumail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 08:03:31 -0700 (PDT)
VERY well said Dave
Amen
Leslie
--- On Tue, 11/2/10, Bradley, David <David_Bradley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Bradley, David <David_Bradley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [klaatumail] Re: John Lennon
To: klaatumail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 3:01 PM
> I admire much of his music
I'll jump in with my two cents worth here.
Looking at this entirely from a musical standpoint, I enjoy John's
music. He had a gift for melody and harmony that rivals Paul McCartney
and George Harrison. The three of them wrote some of the most beautiful
melodies in the history of music, and I don't care what genre you want
to compare their melodies to, they hold up. John also had a beautiful
voice and could sing along side the best of them.
However, when he was writing "simple little songs about love" he was
often writing from a very chaunvanistic and sometimes misogynistic point
of view. Please Please Me is a prime example of that.
Then he moved on to psychedelic imagery. While Paul McCartney was
certainly the more psychedelic of the Beatles, John had a gift for word
play that makes HIS lyrics during that period fascinating. This is my
favorite period for Lennon's lyrics. Strawberry Fields Forever and I Am
The walrus are prime examples of this.
Then he got political and it all went downhill lyrically for me. I
can't stand his political rantings. Attica State is an excellent example
of this (and the irony that his killer is locked up there isn't lost on
me).
When he started to write about love, being a husband, being a father,
being a house husband, etc, it struck a chord with me. I like the
lyrics. However, I too find that it's a bit of a contradiction to how he
acted. However, we all have grown and changed in our own lives and views
and attitudes we once had may no longer match who we are today. I'll
give him the benefit of the doubt and say he finally got it.
The one thing that REALLY bugs the you know what out of me is the way
Imagine has become the ideal song for the ideal world. The world he
paints in a communist hippy ideal that has no basis in the "peace is the
best thing there is" mentality that it's so often associated with.
> Imagine there's no Heaven
I have a problem with this as a Christian. I have a problem with him
implying, or even explicitly saying that there's something BETTER than
Heaven.
> No hell below us
Nothing to hold us accountable for our behavior.
> Imagine all the people
> Living for today
That's today's world. Who cares who gets hurt as long as I'm enjoying
life today.
> Imagine there's no countries
So that we'd all believe exactly the same thing and have the same
natural resources and no reason to covet one region of the world over
another? Nice thought, but beyond human ability to remake the planet
into an all neutral resource that doesn't favor one temperature / region
/ food crop / need over another.
> Nothing to kill or die for
If you have nothing that you would be willing to die for, then you have
nothing worth living for.
> And no religion too
Because we know that religion is the root of all evil and not the
behavior of humans and the way they practice their beliefs, religious or
otherwise. It's easier to place the blame on "religion" in general than
on people and the specifics of their behaviors.
> Imagine all the people
> Living life in peace
With what he describes above, there would be no peace.
> And the world will be as one
Yeah, multiculturalism says ALL ways of life are just as important as
YOUR way of life, which is the same as saying NO way of life is
important and we can all switch to be whatever the thought of the day
requires us to change to. However, then the world wouldn't "be as one"
we would be a bunch of catatonic people not trying to better ourselves
and with nothing to value.
> Imagine no possessions
Like a house to live in ? Like property and the connected political
entity property "rights" ? Yeah, let me take away what you have worked
hard for and we'll ALL be better for it.
> No need for greed or hunger
Well, if no one has any possessions, we won't possess food, and that
will mean hunger.
> Imagine all the people
> Sharing all the world
Instead of working for what we have and being responsible for our own
destiny.
Whenever I hear the melody of Imagine, I cringe at what it represents
and can't bear to listen to it.
The hippies are so taken with the image they think they can get the
world to resemble that they fail to see the disaster they create while
attempting to create that world they imagine.
No one needs to accept what I say and agree with it. Your opinion may be
different. This is just my own two cents on the topic of John Lennon,
and who he was, what he said, and why we can't say he WOULD or WOULD NOT
say or feel a certain view.
Dave
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