Remembering John Lennon...
I was only 12 days old when John Lennon was shot and killed outside his Dakota apartment in New York City...so unlike my parents or others, I can't tell you that I remember hearing the news or where I was when it happened (though I can guess I was probably sleeping). But when this day rolls around each year, I feel the need to mark it somehow and I find myself mourning the loss regardless. There's a pain in my chest when I think about it...a welling of emotion...an incomprehensibility about the whole thing that makes my head spin. So allow me to share a bit because I feel the need :)
I was raised on The Beatles and Lennon's solo career music...my mother adored them but John was her favourite. Some of my earliest memories are of her playing the Double Fantasy album over and over. There isn't a time in my life that I don't associate with that music. So each year December 8 rolls around and each year I mourn in my own way. And each year what gets to me is the waste of it all...hearing interviews and the music of Double Fantasy just show a man at a real positive time in his life - looking forward in eager anticipation, you know?
I spent the evening tonight listening to his last interview and through it all the one thing that got me was his love of life...it was infectious. If you ever get a chance to listen, do it. He was bursting with ideas, theories, and love for his family and fatherhood (he talks incessantly of Yoko, Sean, Julian and even Cynthia). He didn't claim to be a particularly good man, to know what the great answers to life were or how to actually make the world a better place but man, did he want to try to be better, be a better husband/father, to make better music, to make a difference. Then I'd remember he never got the chance (like so many others who've had their time cut short.) And then I'd start to cry. Happens every year. Wasted potential, wasted opportunities. December 8th means Emma should bring Kleenex wherever she goes. I spent the day at work listening to a local radio station (Q107) that was playing nothing but John and The Beatles music all day in tribute. The number of times I welled up at my desk...well, I lost count. My favourite songs change each year and with time but today I've been all about I'm Losing You, I Want You (She's So Heavy), (Just Like) Starting Over, If I Fell, Woman and Mother.
I visited the Strawberry Fields monument in Central Park in October 2006 and I remembering standing there staring at all the Lennon birthday tributes amassed on the ground and staring up at the Dakota. I didn't think it would affect me at all. It did. I welled up and didn't want to leave.
I got to see Paul McCartney this fall. The entire concert was beyond amazing but the highlight for me? Hearing Paul's acoustic tribute to John "Here Today"...it was so simple and so honest. As you may have guessed already, I cried.
The older I get, the more this day seems to affect me. Possibly my own mortality creeping up on me each year? Maybe. No idea really.
But the point is I felt the need to share a bit. It may not have been eloquent or coherent...but there it is.
To sum up: I love John Lennon. I love his outlook on life, his passion. I miss him even if I wasn't around to 'have' him in the first place. Is that weird? Maybe but I'm okay with it.
Yoko Ono wrote a beautiful piece in the New York Times about John. I think most of us can only dream of connecting with someone the way they connected. I highly recommend reading it: The Tea Maker.
I was raised on The Beatles and Lennon's solo career music...my mother adored them but John was her favourite. Some of my earliest memories are of her playing the Double Fantasy album over and over. There isn't a time in my life that I don't associate with that music. So each year December 8 rolls around and each year I mourn in my own way. And each year what gets to me is the waste of it all...hearing interviews and the music of Double Fantasy just show a man at a real positive time in his life - looking forward in eager anticipation, you know?
I spent the evening tonight listening to his last interview and through it all the one thing that got me was his love of life...it was infectious. If you ever get a chance to listen, do it. He was bursting with ideas, theories, and love for his family and fatherhood (he talks incessantly of Yoko, Sean, Julian and even Cynthia). He didn't claim to be a particularly good man, to know what the great answers to life were or how to actually make the world a better place but man, did he want to try to be better, be a better husband/father, to make better music, to make a difference. Then I'd remember he never got the chance (like so many others who've had their time cut short.) And then I'd start to cry. Happens every year. Wasted potential, wasted opportunities. December 8th means Emma should bring Kleenex wherever she goes. I spent the day at work listening to a local radio station (Q107) that was playing nothing but John and The Beatles music all day in tribute. The number of times I welled up at my desk...well, I lost count. My favourite songs change each year and with time but today I've been all about I'm Losing You, I Want You (She's So Heavy), (Just Like) Starting Over, If I Fell, Woman and Mother.
I visited the Strawberry Fields monument in Central Park in October 2006 and I remembering standing there staring at all the Lennon birthday tributes amassed on the ground and staring up at the Dakota. I didn't think it would affect me at all. It did. I welled up and didn't want to leave.
I got to see Paul McCartney this fall. The entire concert was beyond amazing but the highlight for me? Hearing Paul's acoustic tribute to John "Here Today"...it was so simple and so honest. As you may have guessed already, I cried.
The older I get, the more this day seems to affect me. Possibly my own mortality creeping up on me each year? Maybe. No idea really.
But the point is I felt the need to share a bit. It may not have been eloquent or coherent...but there it is.
To sum up: I love John Lennon. I love his outlook on life, his passion. I miss him even if I wasn't around to 'have' him in the first place. Is that weird? Maybe but I'm okay with it.
Yoko Ono wrote a beautiful piece in the New York Times about John. I think most of us can only dream of connecting with someone the way they connected. I highly recommend reading it: The Tea Maker.