Remember
Please...everyone tell me the first thing you did this cold morning was Imagine...
What a Strange Day
On December 8th 1980 I had just arrived in New York and was feeling in a kind of trip, estranged and crushed under those skyscrapers. The family of friends who would have hosted me in that Central Park West apartment must have had the impression the taxman had delivered a bomb in the apartment, not a guest.
I had arrived, discovered I had forgot part of the luggage at the Kennedy Airport, called a friend, gone out... come home again...
The telephone rings... it's a family friend living not far from the place... she is calling there (I wonder why) to tell that she was going to buy cigarettes when she heard a shot from the other side of the street... "they have shot him!"... she was saying on the phone... "they have shot John Lennon!"
Before leaving I had picked up in my Roman house the John and Yoko's last album, Double Fantasy, out of thousands of other records and had thought for a moment to take it with me to New York... but my rationality had risen up against my intuition: why should one take a record with him?
Now I was there in New York, not far from Lennon's home... everything sounded so absurd, magic, incredible... no, it had not to do with jet lag.
I phoned my friends from Skyriders Productions (I would have worked together with as a director on the We Love You John* program to be transmitted by Italian Television) to tell them to go... but I did not go there that day. I was not feeling like... That was not the point...
I felt I had been called there somehow and wondered why.
That painful closeness strengthened my sympathy for the artist, for his indomitable uneasiness, that was mine too, for his story, his disillusions and his desperation, his search, the self-destructive violence, his loves and hatreds and finally his death I had been somehow called for to tell .
I did not. In the video I chose to tell the playful, nonconformist, lyrical and philosophical side of the artist instead.
No Politics, no polemics, not even too much anger for such an untimely death.
Laying the blame on the hand that had shot him down would have meant to mistake the part for the whole...
I attended the 20th anniversary of Lennon's death 5 years ago today in New York. The power in the Dakota and the lone candle in Yoko's window are great reminders of the impact he left on our hearts. I wish I could see the beautiful mosaic right now...but I'll have to imagine.
What a Strange Day
On December 8th 1980 I had just arrived in New York and was feeling in a kind of trip, estranged and crushed under those skyscrapers. The family of friends who would have hosted me in that Central Park West apartment must have had the impression the taxman had delivered a bomb in the apartment, not a guest.
I had arrived, discovered I had forgot part of the luggage at the Kennedy Airport, called a friend, gone out... come home again...
The telephone rings... it's a family friend living not far from the place... she is calling there (I wonder why) to tell that she was going to buy cigarettes when she heard a shot from the other side of the street... "they have shot him!"... she was saying on the phone... "they have shot John Lennon!"
Before leaving I had picked up in my Roman house the John and Yoko's last album, Double Fantasy, out of thousands of other records and had thought for a moment to take it with me to New York... but my rationality had risen up against my intuition: why should one take a record with him?
Now I was there in New York, not far from Lennon's home... everything sounded so absurd, magic, incredible... no, it had not to do with jet lag.
I phoned my friends from Skyriders Productions (I would have worked together with as a director on the We Love You John* program to be transmitted by Italian Television) to tell them to go... but I did not go there that day. I was not feeling like... That was not the point...
I felt I had been called there somehow and wondered why.
That painful closeness strengthened my sympathy for the artist, for his indomitable uneasiness, that was mine too, for his story, his disillusions and his desperation, his search, the self-destructive violence, his loves and hatreds and finally his death I had been somehow called for to tell .
I did not. In the video I chose to tell the playful, nonconformist, lyrical and philosophical side of the artist instead.
No Politics, no polemics, not even too much anger for such an untimely death.
Laying the blame on the hand that had shot him down would have meant to mistake the part for the whole...
I attended the 20th anniversary of Lennon's death 5 years ago today in New York. The power in the Dakota and the lone candle in Yoko's window are great reminders of the impact he left on our hearts. I wish I could see the beautiful mosaic right now...but I'll have to imagine.