Imagine
by Richard Oxman
Special note: *I know how to write. I taught the perfect rules for decades in very prestigious surroundings. When I write like I do below, it’s for various reasons. And one of the reasons has to do with wanting readers to respond proactively. Like providing a table surface that’s uneven…with cups, mugs and glasses, the bottom of all being irregular too. And asking for an alignment. Imagine that you’re given a favorite brew of yours…and all you have to do…to sit at the table and dialogue…is to find the fit for what you’re holding in your hand…on the table. So that you can put the receptacle down at times*.
Blessings from Ox
“Italian police are investigating 186 people including three priests after uncovering an Internet pornography site for pedophiles that showed young children being tortured, an official said Tuesday.” — News item out of Rome focusing on something less severe than what’s here.
“Your latest record and your recent public statements, especially the interviews in *Rolling Stone* magazine, suggest that your views are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this start to happen?” — Tariq Ali interviewing Lennon for *Red Mole*, March 8-22, 1971, asking a question which seems, in retrospect, emblematic of never-ending celebrity inquiries…which can go nowhere, man.
People who aren’t parents may or may not understand. But…imagine your child being abused by a partner who has the law on their side for some reason. Imagine that your bones tell you…your unborn grandchildren will be subjected to the same. That you will pass from this world, leaving that legacy –your feeble arguments, your wishful thinking, your pathetic patience– as the foundation for their future springs.
Then extrapolate. And here’s where being a parent is irrelevant: Transpose the analogy to…what’s being done to Mother Earth, us. Read George Monbiot’s “A Restraint of Liberty\*,” and then continue here.
*The Carbon Trading he ridicules is delineated at Carbon Trading, Climate Change, and the Kyoto Protocol.
People have to get off of the sweet sounds of John Lennon’s song. For all of its being spot-on- target, speaking to the heartstrings… filled with so much creativity, it transfixes us too much on the waste that’s war, the possibilities that could be born out of… cooperation and goodwill. Loving attitudes and acts. I myself have to wrest a lesson from my own injunction; come up with a plan.
The music of “Imagine” makes the platitudes come alive. The *potentially pretentious* fades. From an introverted, brooding piano texture of rocking arpeggios a folk-like vocal line flowers and proliferates. As Wilfrid Mellers points out, “the melismata on the words ’some day’ and ‘join us’ suggest potentiality, waiting to be fulfilled.” [1]
I pick on “Imagine” ’cause I like it, and it’s not an easy “target” for me. I also spotlight it ’cause it’s arguably the best of what distracts us from The Challenge at hand.
Arguments against The State and Religion which it embodies must be looked at anew. And quickly. As starting points only, points of departure for The Umbrella Issue. In other words, what it…and Amy Goodman…and the writers on Counterpunch & ZNet, etc./et. al. dwell on are only small letters under the cover of Roman Numeral One.
Imagine that what is being begged for is a…refocus. What is called for is for us to become as creative as John Lennon…along different lines. To believe that that’s possible…because it’s necessary. Not just because it sounds and feels good.
To wit, what Greenpeace did on the Range Rover Assembly Line …*sans* the getting arrested. And with much more impact.
It’s a no-brainer to lecture the likes of me on the inefficacy –long-term– of violence. Clearly, this is where the creativity must enter the picture. How does one become violent without becoming counterproductive? How does one travel that route without buying into the images of *isms* afoot? How to make hay of what Monbiot has to say, without deflating into simply singing about the challenges, and praying for a different tune? Paying, fatally, for our habits.
As our children do too. Those singers of songs with “wild abdomen,” as Lennon whispered.
The day I’m writing this is the anniversary of the 2nd day of the WWI Battle of Ypres…with its 105,000 casualties; all someone’s children. It’s not hard to imagine that debates surrounding its pros and cons will take us nowhere. A turn has been taken, a new tide is moving toward us. And we cannot afford to remain stuck in lamenting the immorality of battles. Lecturing or enlightening others. We have a Bigger Battle to wage.
Children yet to be born will not have a chance. Mother Earth is not just suffering from contusions. Not just suffering from contusions.
We must get the partner out of the house. But, again, in the scenario I’ve painted… the law is on the spouse’s side. You are being forced to *physically* intervene against an intractable foe.
The soft focus goes out of the singing, and now… you’re being asked to imagine how you can commit violence of a sort. Quickly enough.
There will be no peace vis-a-vis the Greenpeace paradigm; except for very personal, temporary peace possibly. None to be had with more Monbiot mastication, Michael Albert masturbation. Worse than slavery, our situation calls for *way worse* than John Brown.
I can only imagine what is going through your mind right now.
I had been driving my New York taxi near Roosevelt Hospital when John’s body was rushed in; I got there right at the moment that authorities told reporters that Yoko had left the premises… and that he was dead.
My head is filled with his words now about how *Imagination* is the only “nation” one should pledge allegiance to…. Overflowing with the thought…so that…as true as that is… it’s become a distraction.
What else are we imagining… beyond the obvious? No one can afford your being embarrased at not being able to conjure up something substantial. The child is bleeding from an artery.
I’d like to not have to imagine your frustrations… your too private, wildest of thoughts. I’d like to hear from you directly.
Imagine all the people…the few people in our camp… staying focused, regardless of results, on the new tune being played. And communicating that to a select few while acting… *oddly*.
Imagine John Lennon rising from the dead. Resurrecting what’s worth saving of him, getting past the Househusband blather. Resuscitating all the children and their Mother. Imagine what it’s really gonna take.
There may very well be no hell below us, but the fires of Monbiot’s Hell here must be quelled.
Imagine taking part in that with no music playing, no heavenly lyrics to guide you. Certainly, *sans* the sing-a-long. [2]
We must act *atrociously*…or state clearly that we have resigned ourselves to “Watching the Wheels” go ’round and ’round. Grounding down an umbilical cord that should never be severed between children and their Mother.
Uncharted Footnotes:
[1] I don’t know if I’d go as far as saying, as he does (in the January 1972 *Music and Musicians*) that “strings halo the voice with modal gravity…with no hint of cinematic gloss..,” but the vision of a positive vision of peace and brotherhood of Man is made incarnate. To the degree that a song can significantly do that. We must do that…otherwise. As in *other ways*. “Melismata,” by the way = *A passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text, as in Gregorian chant*.
[2] Lennon’s public analysis of the political situation was vague. It was constrained by a tendency to think in universals or unrepresentative individual terms, as per Paul Hodson’s “John Lennon, Bob Geldorf and why pop songs don’t change the world.” As he notes, “These terms provide a weak foundation for political action….” But we know that. Just as we know that one’s way of living is a political statement. Tony Tyler, in I Hate Rock ‘n Roll: An Illustrated Diatribe (p. 117), underscores that the *Imagine* promotional film depicted “those who urged the no-possession option upon their admirers and followers” as “themselves visibly richer than Croesus.” As Hodson stresses: “Lennon’s privileged isolation, the scale of the political targets he chose and the size of the movements he joined combined to make any communication with the counter-culture strictly one-way….” At this juncture, we clearly can wait for no more Messiahs. This is not a condemnation of John, but rather…a condemnation of the path on which we may choose to remain.
