"Lennon"

John Lennon: 1940-1980. He died on December 8th. I wrote a song called "Love Piece/Love Peace" a few hours later. I still play it, mostly on December 8th. Many of my songs evolve as I continue to grow older. However, few of my songs actually grow in length. This one is the exception. It has already grown from a chimpanzee to a guerilla. For example, in the year 2000, I added a verse that starts out "Twenty years ago today"--that verse was a no-brainer.

Since the song is both a "love piece" and a song about "loving peace," the two themes that permeated Lennon's music--and since the poison of hatred (and misunderstanding), which clouds vision, blurs sanity, and leads us too often to war (and death) is always countered by a return to clarity and a focus on peace (and love), at least until the next time and the time after that, there will always be new verses to write, new wrongs to right, fresh opportunities to see the light.

Meanwhile, my mother-of-all-songs-about-Lennon song just gets longer and longer (i.e., it's already nine minutes long) with verses about the tragedy of student verses student at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the tragedy of American verses American at Oklahoma City and Waco, Texas, the tragedy of airline passenger verses airline passenger flying over New York City and Washington D.C., the tragedy of an American president verses an Iraqi president in Iraq, the tragedy of homeland verses homeland among Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, the tragedy of Utahn verses Utahn at Trolley Square--and "the beat goes on" as Sonny and Cher once sang.

Unfortunately, the song may never be finished. Someday, I'll post a video of the song. The ultimate tragedy of all of the tragedies described above is the fact that the warriors who engaged in these tragedies, invariably, were young men and woman, some of whom knew what they were getting into, having already experienced the heart of darkness and others, who merely wanted "green hats" and didn't realize there was a heart of darkness until it was too late (see my blog entry: "An Assortment of Paintings and Collages..."; find the painting entitled, "Green Machine." See the commentary under that painting--it's a true story).