John Lennon in his Pickwick glasses is like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, or much like Dickens himself in his concern for social justice and his endless sympathy for the literal, and figurative, orphan, outsider, and underdog. Lennon can also fruitfully be compared to perhaps the only other English writer of the nineteenth century who rivals Dickens in staying power and popularity. Like Lewis Carroll and his beloved, living Alice, Lennon’s life was all about expanding the mind, and through the mind, the heart.
Lennon was crucified by his own fame in the form of one of his own fans. This early, dramatic death catapulted him to another level in the modern pantheon of heroes and secular saints, just as Van Gogh’s lonely death would eventually elevate him in the same way. Before Lennon was wrenched away from this earth in the literal sense, he created a body of work that yet remains here to be explored in order to uncover its true depth, importance, and hidden meanings. His simple, straightforward, and mysterious writing style will last a very long time, probably at least as long as Dickens and Carroll themselves.
Lennon’s work with Paul McCartney and the Beatles is, of course, a whole other universe unto itself. But perhaps it’s in Lennon’s solo work that we can most fully take the measure of the man and the evolving, never-resting artist (for the artist is working even while dreaming), and the continued meaning of his words and music for the world at large.
Lennon began to move decisively away from McCartney and into his work as a solo songwriter on the brilliant, fragmented, cohesive, novelistic, experimental, James-Joycean double record now known most widely as “The White Album.” In three songs especially from this album, Lennon stakes out his own territory as an emerging, Dylanesque solo artist.
“Happiness is a Warm Gun,” “I’m So Tired” and “Dear Prudence” set the stage for his eventual movement away from the Beatles as the 1960s ended and into his brilliant, solitary decade of the 1970s before the artistic crucifixion in 1980 ended it all at the age of 40 (the exact age when Kafka and Poe, two other short-form writers of worldwide importance who surely influenced Lennon (whether he read them or not), also died).
“Happiness” explodes the tired and worn-out conventions of song-writing. “Tired” laments weariness in general, and weariness with old, worn-out worlds. “Prudence” is an invitation to something new and dear.
In a double or triple-handful of classic songs from the coming decade of the 1970s, the last decade he would have left, Lennon expanded both his writing skills and his persona and stance as a democratic humanitarian, a worker for peace, justice, and love who has few equals in this regard. The writing reinforced the anti-authoritarian persona and personality, and the anti-establishment stance buttressed the writing at all levels. The wonder and the artistic miracle of it is that Lennon also never became an ideologue, a propagandist, or a politician.
He perhaps became a sloganeer at his worst moments. But he always managed to rise above it again to assert the power of pure writing, which made his art for peace that much more effective. It leads us back to Dickens, who in some senses seems to have created John Lennon. Lewis Carroll’s open-minded, exploratory writing also undermined authoritarianism, hatred, greed, and war, in a way that was so pure and effective it was almost invisible at times.
Paradoxically, the invisibility seeps into the culture and effects real change in a way that politics and politicians can only dream of. This is why Percy Bysshe Shelley, another English radical fighting the bad guys, thinking of John Milton, called true poets, “The unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The phenomenon undergoes changes in mode and method of action; but it never goes away. In indigenous cultures, the figure of the shaman, trickster, and medicine person carried and carries much of these responsibilities and burdens.
“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” is another song written exclusively by Lennon which appeared on The Beatles’ “The White Album” and was an omen of things to come. A seeming piece of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear nonsense writing, it’s crucial to note that the greatest nonsense wordsmithing is never about only nonsense, just as the best nursery rhymes are not only for children.
McCartney believed the song was about heroin usage. Lennon’s anti-establishment stance would take many forms in the era of Richard Nixon. One of these forms was Lennon’s belief, and life action, like Sigmund Freud earlier, that the individual should be free to use and explore drugs as s/he saw fit, without the government intruding its heavy, uncaring, impersonal hand. It started when Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to marijuana in New York City. The sacred weed later led to LSD, and, for Lennon, cocaine and heroin usage. Ironically, in the era of the alcoholic, paranoid, pill-popping Tricky Dick, Lennon’s song was prophetic in very many other ways as well. All members of the Beatles had always been heavy cigarette-smokers and alcohol-drinkers. Their expansion into other drugs was a sign of the times as personal freedoms were skyrocketing.
And it also led to the song that is often cited as John Lennon’s first solo writing performance, completely free of Paul McCartney: “Cold Turkey,” a piece that was supposedly rejected by the band. Like all Lennon’s work, this story about withdrawing from opioid usage has only become more relevant with time as usage of this form of drugs has spread and become far more popular in the general population at large.
“Cold Turkey” introduces a desperate, naked, screaming, wailing, withdrawing Lennon backed by punk-rock guitar long before punk rock existed. Anyone who’s gone through this sort of withdrawal, or witnessed someone else going through it, or both, will instantly recognize the skin-crawling, nightmarish desperation of this personal hell on earth, which Lennon bravely shares in a forum that exposes his weakness for all to see, bringing confessional writing to another level in modern English.
Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that writers, musicians, and artists have always loved the buzz, whether it be from caffeine, food, alcohol, nicotine, or other drugs, walking, nature, or love. Teenaged Arthur Rimbaud, who influenced Bob Dylan so heavily, riffing on Charles Baudelaire, father of the cursed poets, codified this buzz-love in one of his “Seer” letters to a personal friend when he said that the purpose was an “intentional derangement of all the senses” (including the sixth sense) that led to higher forms of consciousness.
Charles Dickens’ Opium Sal from “Edwin Drood,” plus Dickens himself, and Carroll’s hookah-smoking caterpillar, also promoted this type of behavior, as did Freud with his endless cigar-smoking and cocaine experimentation and usage, or Beethoven, Goethe, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare with their alcohol abuse. The flipside is the famous, eternal “27 Club,” almost all of whose members died so tragically young from alcohol, drugs or some combination of the two.
Lennon’s “Cold Turkey” compresses Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas de Quincy, and William S. Burroughs, one of the original three beats, into a song both courageously ahead of its time and backward-looking toward a complex, complicated problem that has always been and always will be with us. This is not pop music as feel-good distraction or toe-tapping laughability. It’s high art that questions, challenges, and provokes, like a poem by Keats, Byron, or Shelley. The language is simple and direct in a modern, or Hemingwayesque, style. The sentiments about sickness are never-ending in this mortal world.
“Gimme Some Truth,” another absolute solo song-writing masterpiece from John, tackles Tricky Dick directly, and by name. Nixon hated Lennon and kept trying to get him thrown out of the United States. John, at a great, paranoid cost to himself and his mental health, refused to leave, as a statement of world-wide personal freedom. He wouldn’t let the biggest bully on the block, at the moment, tell him what to do. It was an act and effort on Lennon’s part that was meant as an example for all bullied people to follow, an act of consolation and encouragement for the world.
Dylan wrote a personal, public letter saying, “Let John and Yoko stay!” In “Gimme Some Truth,” John Lennon stands up for anyone who’s ever felt abused or lied to, which is the same thing, by a hypocritical authority figure, whether it be teacher, preacher, boss, corporate spy, president, parent or other politician. The satiric nonsense writing in this piece is a nursery rhyme turned spiritual sword used against the big, bad eggs in the nest, who have always been there, and still need to be pushed out.
In “Working Class Hero,” a related but also very different song which has had a profound personal meaning for millions of people, including many of the people I know personally, Lennon continues the theme but switches tone and mode. “As soon as you’re born they make you feel small,” has got to be one of the most devastating first lines ever penned in song, poem, or story. Lennon’s voice is somehow both monotonous and emotive at the same time as he continues to detail and outline the way society, and individuals, crush one another in this life for no real reason at all, unless it be for mere spite and general selfish nastiness.
Something of the savage misanthropy of Dr. Jonathan Swift for the way we do business these days, in the modern world, is embodied in this song. “Working Class Hero” eviscerates what people do to one another, adding up to one of the most tragic, heartbroken, angry, rebellious songs in the cannon. You wonder how it can be so very consoling in its utter despair, but it somehow is; no one but Lennon could have written this piece or any other of his idiosyncratic, idiomatic, universal laments or anthems to peace, love, and justice.
Because Lennon, like Dickens, Carroll, and Shakespeare himself, is the master of many more than one mode, and many of his songs from the 1970s have a whole-hearted, positive, and even religious quality, and vibe, that has endeared them and him to many more millions of people all around the globe, and continues to do so.
“Mind Games” is one of the very best and most iconic of these pieces. “Pushing the barrier, planting seed,” captures, in five words, Lennon’s lifelong project. “Soul power” says where and how Lennon wants to move the world. The “mind guerillas” are the rebels, the thinkers, the spiritual warriors, the people who refuse to go along with the mob, the crowd, and the herd, because what you don’t do is just as crucial and important as what you do, as Henry David Thoreau pointed out in both his life and work, moving to a cabin to live alone and penning “Civil Disobedience,” which massively influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.. The grail, the veil, and the Druid Dude in the song bring East, West, and indigenous together, today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
“Love is the answer, and you know that for sure,” Lennon sings and speaks, beautifully talking to the world. “I want you to make love, not war.” Like James Joyce’s Molly and Leopold Bloom, Lennon says that “yes is surrender.”
“Why is art beautiful?” asked Fernando Pessoa. “Because it’s useless. Why is life ugly? Because it’s all aims, objectives, and intentions.” In “Mind Games,” Lennon, like Pessoa, in a few extremely potent words and images, argues for the beauty of uselessness.
The upbeat and popular “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)” is a gorgeous companion piece to “Mind Games.” A memento mori, or death-reminder, piece, this song is also a global manifesto that infuses the religious point of view, and religion itself, with new and lively meanings for people everywhere. “Better recognize your brothers,” Lennon says, like Jesus. “Everyone you meet.” It also bemoans the derisive laughter which the mob mentality always throws out at “fools like me.”
“Power to the People” and “Give Peace a Chance” create, or reinforce, great phrases that have entered the language in the manner of Shakespeare or Robert Burns, poet and ballad-collector. The progressive, anarchistic, half-Marxian nature of these manifesto pieces which call for enduring change have endeared Lennon to many in the public sphere, helping to shape and create his status as vast humanitarian, a friend to working people and the lower orders of the social hierarchy everywhere, much like Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In “Mother,” “My Mummy’s Dead,” and “Julia” (another solo song-writing effort from “The White Album”), Lennon leaves the public sphere and delves and dives, like Freud and Jung, deep within the subconscious nature of every individual human. The Dickensian status of the orphan is explored as we are all exposed as orphans in these songs. Julia haunts the hearer by her absence, as do the mother and father in “Mother.” Lennon said this piece was about “all the parents, alive or half dead.” John Donne’s tolling bells begin the best version of this song. “Father, you left me, but I never left you” is one of Lennon’s most heartbreaking lines. “So I, I just got to tell you, goodbye. Goodbye.”
“My Mummy’s Dead” is a partial adaptation of “Three Blind Mice,” the English nursery rhyme and musical round. This song is so deeply, profoundly child-like, its uniqueness is starling, if not shocking, as in some of the poetry of Lewis Carroll. This song is so personal it’s almost embarrassing, which makes it about as brave a piece of writing as there can be. Popular music has once again broken through to another level in Lennon’s hands in the simplest, widest, most universal terms.
In “God,” Lennon tells his listeners what he truly believes in as he also consoles his audience for the loss of the Beatles and the end of the dream in the 1960s. In “Watching the Wheels,” from a decade later, John explains his Thoreau-like, Emily Dickinson-like, monkish retreat from the world and all its aims, objectives, and intentions.
“Happy Xmas (War is Over),” co-written with his genius wife and life collaborator, Yoko Ono, is one of the most beautiful and serious Christmas songs ever penned. It somehow leads directly into “Imagine,” Lennon’s most famous song, inspired by Yoko, and also inspired by the gift of a Christian prayer book from a friend. This song is part of the reason Lennon is the most recorded song writer of all time, surpassing his nearest rival, Paul McCartney. It famously calls for a peaceful world without materialism, religion and God, but Lennon explains that it “means this thing about my God is bigger than your God.” This song is such a well-known, world-wide anthem that it makes the case for Lennon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, if this award were given posthumously. Bob Marley, with “Redemption Song,” is a similar figure.
All the songs discussed in this essay, from around fifty years ago, more or less, sound exactly like they could have been made yesterday, or tomorrow. And almost all the songs talked about in this short paper are short. One of them is under one minute long. In 54 seconds, it manages to do more than a whole shelf full of albums by many another musical artist. The Mona Lisa, most famous painting in the world, focuses on a single, plainly dressed, unfamous woman, and it doesn’t even show her whole body. This kind of minimalism is a key (and a secret) to Lennon’s art.
According to a Wikipedia entry, the “tortured genius character” in fiction is characterized by “the burden of superior intelligence, arrogance, eccentricities, addiction, awkwardness, mental health issues, lack of social skills, isolation, other insecurities, and regular existential crises.” As a tortured genius character in real life, Lennon experienced and lived all of the above. To be a genius is to be misunderstood, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, who Harold Bloom called “the mind of America.”
After his mother’s sudden death when he was a teenager, Lennon drank and brawled for two years. He was later kicked out of college for these activities and other defiant behaviors. But Thomas Carlyle also pointed out that the true poet, thinker, and/or artist “can recognize how every object has a divine beauty.” Lennon lived, and expressed for all the world, this truth as well. In forty short, and long, years, he was able to give enough of himself so that if you know his work well, it’s like knowing a real person well: a best friend, forever.
Sam Shepard, on a level with Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill, said (reflecting on himself) that the true artists are largely boring, or useless, to the average individual or the general population on the social level because the artist is always silently working within herself, and doing nothing else as much as possible, even in a room full of people.
Baudelaire said, “The true artist never emerges from himself.” What he creates is a different matter. Lennon’s songs emerged from himself, as in “Mind Games,” to enter our world and literally change it for the better, inspiring countless numbers of thinkers, artists, and rebels all over the globe, and permanently challenging the status quo until the world he envisioned in “Imagine” becomes a reality.
End note: The title of this essay was inspired by the a cappela Son House version of the classic folk/gospel song, “John the Revelator.” Just as I obviously recommend listening to and studying all of the Lennon songs discussed in this essay as an accompaniment to this reading, I recommend listening to, absorbing, and internalizing “John the Revelator” by Son House.
End note: I was informed of the passing on of Kris Kristofferson, another musical rebel at Lennon’s spiritual and artistic level, while writing the last paragraph of this essay on Sunday, September 29, 2024. Accordingly, my next work will be an essay exploring the life, work, and genius of Kristofferson.
Image: a potpourri of leaves, dried flowers and seeds from pixabay.com
literally stories 
Hi Dale
This is an extremely deep and detailed look into the soul of an artist who was martyred. Like JFK, MLK and Ghandi, Lennon made it pretty easy for an assassin to take him. But in the cases of all, they must have had faith that their way was the best, no matter what.
Lennon was also a victim of the crush of unimaginable fame. I imagine that must be overwhelming. He also was not beloved by his older son for John’s saying that Julian was an accident. Lennon often spoke on personal matters without thinking. It’s good to remember the human being over the legend, I think he would agree.
A truly mutitalented artist. I read In His Own Write–like Thurber on acid.
Also, once again I congratulate you on the style of the piece; it comes off effortless and crystal clear. I think we all know the incredible amount of work it takes to reach that high level.
Thank you for another winner.
Leila
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you Leila!
Nietzsche said this:
“These earnest ones may be informed of my conviction that art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity in this life.” He said it in The Birth of Tragedy, his book on Dionysus, Apollo, and Greek music, which was a book that ruined his academic career because it followed none of the usual rules in German academia at the time.
I first came across Nietzsche in a book called No One Here Gets Out Alive by Danny Sugerman and Jerry Hopkins (a book I believe you know), which is a biography of Jim Morrison. I read this book at 13 in 1980 in Quincy, Illinois, and have never looked at it since, but I remember large swaths of the book quite well because it was such a revelation for me.
That book opened my eyes to the meaning of the highest (or the best) rock and roll music and what this stuff was really all about. With a few friends exploring along with me (while sharing cigarettes, cans of beer and marijuana usually), we began to explore The Beatles work in detail, especially The White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be, and Sergeant Pepper. All of this, of course, was on record players. The albums themselves with their big paper covers were awesome, works of art in themselves.
But what I know about The Beatles actually goes much farther back than that, truly into “before I can remember” as the adults in my family (aunts and uncles and parents) used to play The Beatles for my cousins, my brother and myself when we were little: songs like Yellow Submarine, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Lucy in the Sky were always blasting out at my aunt and uncle’s house (he had been a famous Venezuelan musician in a band called Los Darts and is still a celebrity in Venezuela; when he passed on, 3,000 people attended his funeral in Caracas – Victor Gamez) so my Beatles Knowledge is at least 57 years old, and I’ll be 58 years old tomorrow.
“John the Revelator” could not, and would not, have been written without you, Hugh, and Diane, and the writing of this essay turned me into a better writer, honing my skills to go on to the next essay; for me there is no greater birthday gift. So thank you for inspiring and curating/posting/publishing this piece!
And, you are right to compare John with MLK, JFK, Gandhi, and even Jesus, who set the stage for all the martyrs he knew would follow him until the world turns. Also, thanks for mentioning Lennon’s book and comparing it to Thurber on Acid; I’ll carry that image around in my mind (and beyond) all day and it makes me want to get my hands on that book! (although not to take acid again because I had my fair share of that in the 1980s, inspired by none other than The Beatles, all of them). (I’ve looked at that book before but it’s been a while).
Thank you Leila!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Dale
Happy birthday! I recall being a youngun’ of that vintage. Back in ’17 if I recollect.
Still this is a fine essay. I remember that Morrison book, read ii back in ’82. Jeez, I am going to need a space telescope to keep looking farther back.
Leila
LikeLike
A fascinating essay. Yes, it did encourage me to listen to some of the songs that I am not familiar with. My favourite tracks of all time are the Beatles sixties numbers along with quite a few spin off groups of the time. One note from the introduction of many of them catapults me back to ‘ago’ (as Leila s cleverly says). By the time John was writing his other works I was in a country where it was difficult to keep up with trends and developments in music so I guess I ‘fell behind’ but he will always be there as a beautiful soul in my heart and I still mourn him. This piece though made me think more deeply about what he accomplished and how he influenced so much and so many. Thank you for this – dd
LikeLiked by 3 people
Diane
THANK YOU for reading this piece and for creating a space where writing like this can appear. I feel that John the Revelator somehow has a cutting-edge aspect to it, and is also rather roughhewn in certain ways as the cutting-edge always is, and only a creative space like LS would be truly open to writing like this right now, which comes all down to the great humanity and talents of yourself, Hugh and Leila (and the other founding editors). In form and style of writing for this essay, I actually did try to follow (partly unconsciously on purpose) the “rough” style of Lennon in his later work. I know people who listen to his song “Mother” and can’t stand the screaming in it, believing it to be a ridiculous song (or not even a song) because of the screaming, not a masterpiece, while I myself have been known to listen to the song over and over and over again because I believe and feel that it is a human masterpiece. (We have to say “human” now because so many are starting to believe that robots can create human art, which they can’t – because they don’t suffer. What robots create is something else, but only humans can produce true art for humans, just as birds and whales sing for other birds and other whales. We may find it beautiful, and we do, but we can’t truly understand what a whale is saying to another whale when it’s singing. Also, AIs aren’t even alive. John shows us all what it’s like to be alive! etc…)
And, thanks for calling him a “beautiful soul.” As the commentator Chris Hedges recently said at the end of an interview, “The soul is real.” Just that and no more and no less. Despite of all the “bad” things he did (including fighting and violence sometimes, etc etc) Lennon at heart truly was a beautiful soul who seems to have sacrificed himself for his art some way. I often think of him in relation to Bob Marley in that way, another truly beautiful soul.
Thanks again for creating LS and so much more!
Dale
LikeLike
Hey Dale,
I loved your essay. And I guess we all could add names to your list. It’s a wonderful list. Why then did I sit at my desk for a full hour, before I could begin to write this?
All I could think of was how unsuited we are as a species to figure out what being human could be, how we have no idea how to make any of it right. Ignorance, racism, anti-intellectualism, vengeance, triumphalism. The Gulf of America.
I decided to just type something, post it, then listen to The White Album. All of it. Maybe see what I can find of Kristofferson.
Whatever gets you through the night.
I gotta do something. — Gerry
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gerry
You’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head, I do believe. Humans understand how to make 7000 nuclear bombs for Russia and 7000 for the USA, they know how to create computers that can “write songs” (but not human songs), they know how to blast off rockets, and capture the entire world with gadgets, and how to make money, and how to rip one another off. But we know little to nothing about what it REALLY is to BE a human being. On that score, we are desperately behind, and in many ways, we have fallen back, or rather forward, into an extra level of ignorance these days. In the days of the Ancient Greeks, and in ancient India, for example, they knew what a human was and is FAR better than we do today. WE are letting rampant consumerism take over the soul of the world, kill off all the animals, and reward the nasty, grasping, greedy folks like Donald T. And yet, beneath the surface, something is smoldering….humanity remains. I don’t believe the game is over quite yet. And I do believe there’s a higher power in the universe that bends everything toward the good eventually…which happens even amongst the blood, sweat, toil and thirst and hunger, and the injustice. Many called John Lennon an atheist, because he himself sometimes stated that he was. On the other hand, he manifestly wasn’t an atheist at all. He couldn’t have created the things he did if he didn’t believe in something deeper. It had little or nothing to do with religion or creeds, but it was a kind of belief in life itself and the human spirit. Turning toward that light that still hasn’t gone out is all we can do, and it’s also everything, and every time someone does this, it creates good vibes that radiate out into other people, even, or especially, when one does it alone.
I got plunged into what very much resembled a clinical depression on the night Trump won the US election. It was none other than Leila who helped draw me out of it with her quiet wisdom.
Thanks for reading John the Revelator, and commenting. The ancient Greeks were GREAT at turning to heroic figures from the past to help them get over or through the present. We can still do the same thing. For me, that’s the greatest thing there is.
Congrats again on your latest LS story – it’s awesomely done, and very much worth re-reading and hanging around with.
Dale
“Nero can kill me but he can’t harm me.” – a stoic philosopher whose name I can’t remember right now
LikeLike
Utterly staggering in its range of references, brimming with insight, verve. And I say that as one who always had a problem with the song Imagine, which I used to slam as mushy & trite, but its being inspired by a prayer book somehow kind of redeems it, unbeliever that I am. As with your other essays, it prompts a person to re-listen, re-read. Well worth it too. Mind Games now heard with new ears. Watching the Wheels also. Hadn’t considered Cold Turkey that much either, which is odd, or not odd at all, given the umpteenth cold turkey it took me to get miserably clean. I jest, but only just.
Funnily enough, I’d intended to mention Blind Willie Johnson’s rendition of John the Revelator after reading your Howlin’ Wolf piece, but comment was unavoidably cut short.
Can’t finish without mentioning the Ballad of John & Yoko, a song that never fails to freshen the senses, lift the mood.
Incidentally, WH Auden, who disdained these “pop-singing” chaps, was nevertheless highly impressed by Lennon’s book In His Own Write, deeming it more inventive than the honed delicacies of e.g. Stephen Spender & others.
Your essays always engage mind & heart.
Geraint
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with David Henson: your thoughts on Jim Morrison would be a welcome read. Always found JM to be an underrated ‘microfictionist – as seen in the his slim vol The Lords, many of the pieces fewer than 100 words but seem to me to resonate more than do his looser-limbed poems.
Geraint
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Geraint
Jim Morrison as microfictionist is an absolutely cool and brilliant connection/comparison/linkage/& image, etc. Wallace Fowlie wrote a good little book called RIMBAUD AND JIM MORRISON: THE REBEL AS POET. It would be good to extend the connections! Thanks for all the feedback and fascinating ideas…Microfiction = part of the cutting edge now (and also a resurrection of the ancient/never-ending in fables and parables, etc).
Dale
LikeLike
Geraint
Thank you so much! Always looking forward to what you have to say because of your ability to understand what I’m trying to say! Your ability to boil down my essays and draw out the crucial aspects of it all always creates the kind of dialogue that literature is all about, and cannot exist without. And thanks for mentioning that aspect about the mind AND the heart. In these types of analytical pieces, not excluding the heart has for sure been my intention, or my goal. I’m very glad to hear from a reader like you that these essays succeed in this. I’ve never been a fan of cold-hearted intellectual literary criticism which seems to glut the market on many levels these days. Some of those do have very accurate minds in many ways, but you wonder where their heart has gone. It leaves you feeling cold and thirsty (and sometimes degraded).
I hadn’t heard that about WH Auden, thanks for sharing! Philip Larkin, who has five or six poems that are among my very favorites, also had an ambivalent attitude with both Beatles and Dylan. He was a fan – and sometimes had a hard time admitting it. (Which wasn’t true when it came to American jazz artists, especially African American jazz artists, upon whom he endlessly heaped great praise from his youth to his death).
Your latest LS story is extremely good as stated previously; it can stand up to many re-readings; the character complexity of the piece, and the tone, are art at a very high level!
Thanks again, Geraint!
Dale
LikeLike
A brilliant and informative essay. I thought I was fairly well-informed about Lennon’s work, but this writing gave me so much more insight. I’m already looking forward to the Kristofferson piece. I bet, Dale, you could do a bang-up job writing about Jim Morrison, too. (Hint, hint!)
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dear David
Thank you so much! You’ve given me a truly great idea! I have no idea why, but for some reason, in my search for subject matter, it has never once occurred to me to write something about Jim M., even though for a long time he was just as important to me as The Beatles were/are. But this is a great idea – I’m putting it on the list for sure. I can already think of a main direction for a Jim Morrison essay to go! Morrison read Nietzsche very young, and he was influenced profoundly by the philosopher. Will start with that (perhaps) and move on to Morrison’s poetry! Jim M. was one of the most literary rock stars by far, even quit music to become a poet.
Thank you, David!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think of the other side of Lennon. His hypocrisy – living the life of luxury which inspired some addled person to kill him. He was known to make fun of the disabled. Deserting his family when something else came along. I don’t believe genius if that can be said of Lennon justifies cruely.
LikeLike
Ah yes, but geniuses aren’t saints. I agree with you that those who do the most good sometimes struggle with the worst aspects of the human character too. Come to think of it, this is true of even the saints – almost every single saint has a story of overcoming their great sinfulness to give more good back to the world in the end – and I think Lennon did that. And if he wasn’t a genius as a writer and musician, then such simply doesn’t exist. His originality and his intensity are simply beyond compare – no one can write as well about being abandoned by their parents as he can, and we were and are all abandoned in one way or another. As for living in luxury, he spent very little time thinking about his own money, and he lived in a figurative castle because he had to – he would have been mobbed if he didn’t stay behind the walls. Yet he still came out from behind the walls sometimes – and you’re right, this is what got him in the end. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were bad – John Lennon was a secular saint by the time of his death. We all need to look in the mirror first before lobbing our rotten fruit at others – and we all shine on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey Dale
Great essay on John Lennon! Those JL glasses were so iconic. Interesting how he started to drift from the Beatles into his solo career.
I’m not as familiar with John’s solo music. I know he was majorly against the Vietnam War. Kind of strange in a way to have a foreigner take on the US gov. and living in the US, (so brave).
He was a major pot stirrer. When he said talking about the Beatles, “Were more popular than Jesus.” He caught a lot of hate in the states from the Christians or so called Christians. I remember that from the “Eight Days a Week” doc.
It’s pretty neat how you point out his writing style. It’s easy to overlook musicians as writers, so I think your evaluation of his writing skills are very well thought out. Maybe part of those notes you mentioned… that are dispersed lying on the floor.
I saw John and Yoko on Dick Cavett, and he was cheeky as the Brits say. He must have been a hoot to hang with. I think he was a most interesting fellow–understatement.
I thought what you said about personnel freedoms skyrocketing and drug use was important and thought provoking. How the government controls so much of what people can do. All these laws.
There were a lot of intriguing people intertwined in this essay like Freud, Jung, and Milton to mention a few. I always like how you connect these famous artists with other famous people. I think it would be impossible for someone without your knowledge to write such an in-depth essay. The way you convey these intricate people is pretty amazing! Your writing skills are off the charts!
The comparison of John and Emily Dickenson’s retreating lifestyles was also a rather poignant observation.
Then the lunatic had to end everything for his own glory. Shame–Chapman–Booth wannabe.
Looking forward to your Kristofferson essay!
Christopher
LikeLike
Christopher
Thank you so much for all of your thoughtful, perceptive, and penetrating comments!
One thing you always do is take the time to give great, comprehensive feedback and to demonstrate how well you’ve understood it all. It simply CANNOT be overstated how much I appreciate all of this – this kind of mutual engagement with the work is the only thing that makes it all worth it.
I also notice(d) how you never highlight (or even say) anything negative (even though there are negative things that could be rightly said on some level). Your words are always and only pure positivity. That was always true of someone like Leonard Cohen as well – he never (or very rarely) attacked anyone personally for the foibles, failures, or contradictions we all possess in greater or lesser measure. He said many negative things about the “herd mentality” of modern life. And he wrote a book called FLOWERS FOR HITLER. As a Jew who had family members who perished in the camps, he must have been mad, many say, to write a book called FLOWERS FOR HITLER. On the contrary – he was living up to Jesus’ suggestion to “turn the other cheek” (because, like Bob Dylan, he always called himself a follower of Jesus’ teachings as well as a practicing Jew). That kind of complexity and open-heartedness is bound to be very much misunderstood by the vast mass of humanity (“the herd” he always spoke of as being so dangerous). Perhaps that fact makes it even that much more precious.
Your short stories show your great heart as well – the sympathy/empathy/understanding your writing shows for the human condition is profound.
Thank you endlessly!
Dale
“A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.” – Leonard Cohen
LikeLike
Hi Dale
I was reading your essay Sunday then I got busy, but I regretted having to stop. And I thought, damn this is good… I was in the stride of good reading, so thank you for that!
These essays are very enlightening and you certainly enrich us readers and writers.
I would be remiss to criticize someone who writes as well as you do… But even so, I don’t want to criticize anyone’s writing. I think writers are sensitive people. I’ve had my work criticized here and there. It’s not the best feeling… And not easily forgettable. Some, might be true, but not all of it. Their critiques are usually vague and unhelpful. Just striking out with the Internet’s easy anonymity. I think I’ve misunderstood some good work myself that I need to revisit. HP Lovecraft’s’ “The Call of Cthulhu,” comes to mind.
FLOWERS FOR HITLER by Leonard Cohen that sound like an intriguing story. Considering his family and the camps. To keep such a good attitude in that light would take Jesus.
Thanks for appreciating my work!
Christopher
LikeLike
Hi Christopher!
How’s the writing, reading, and studying going? How’s everything else?
HP Lovecraft is an extremely interesting writer. Funny how he’s a “household name” in horror fiction now, and could never make a living from his writing while he lived – and not even close. Along with his fiction, he wrote tons of nonfiction, letters and things about writing – for me, much of his nonfiction in all its various forms is better than his fiction! Also, they say he mostly didn’t care that he could never “make a living” from his writing – he still felt like his writing had saved his life, and for him (as it should be for all of us), that was good enough. He had some EXTREMELY politically incorrect opinions, and some folks considered him a racist even in his own day, when everyone (almost) was a racist.
Later Lovecraft retracted many of those same opinions. I think we should give him credit for changing his mind, and saying so. The last thing someone said should surely be just as important as some of the early things they said – if not more so! And yet, in academia these days, HP Lovecraft is mostly just another dead white male writer who’s nothing short of anathema. The closed minds in the closed halls of US academia these days (ESPECIALLY in the English departments) is mind-blowing, truly. Groupthink at its finest on display! Even Shakespeare is usually trashed these days! Lovecraft and his mother used to read Shakespeare aloud to each other so loudly that the neighbors thought they were arguing.
Yes, writers as sensitive types who obsess on criticism is surely true.
I once saw a Chicago writer leap across a table and half-bash another writer in the head with a beer bottle because the writer who got bashed in the head with the beer bottle said something insulting under his breath about the leaping-across-the-table writer’s work in a workshop and then repeated it later at the drinking party. Come to think of it, I was the one who jumped between them. His head was bleeding but he kept on drinkin’! Those were the good old days! Puking in the alley then heading straight back into the bar and never even putting out one’s cigarette. Pure exhilaration (that one always paid for later). But Jesus had wine at his first miracle and his Last Supper (and many places in between. “The son of man comes eating and drinking,” he said of himself).
Later,
Dale
LikeLike
Hey Dale
Reading some more James Lee Burke. “A Stained White Radiance,” another detective story of the Iberia Parish, Louisiana
Working on a 2300 word story–the same sort of downtrodden people. I’ve decided this is the last edit. Death is a central theme. I think Poe suggested writing about death, so I took that to heart.
I can’t say I’ve read much of Hp’s work. Yes, too bad about the racist bit, but everyone was a racist then. I think he deserves a second chance and who knows racism may come back in vogue
with the new administration and the ad-hoc South Afrikaner. I mean that in the most Germanic terms.
It’s certainly the whites turn to get it. Even though many of us are not deserving, whoever said racism was fair. Probably a racist did. There are very few genetic differences between the races.
When I hear people talking shit about my race it doesn’t help my outlook on the topic. it is a crummy feeling too hear it. Like your ignorant because you didn’t understand all the symbolism of the Super bowl half time show because you’re a closed minded, uneducated white person over 50. Will fuck you too is all I can say on that. I couldn’t make out a single word and I didn’t know I needed a playbill to get it. Besides it was shit, at least in my opinion. The dancing wasn’t bad…
And this goes along with what you said in another post… How universities are treating all of these great white writers like they are persona non grata. I do not believe in censorship! No way shape or form, especially from the very supposed enlightened functionaries of our universities. How many magazines I’ve seen that say you must be more or less not white to submit a story. Fuck them, too. That’s the kind of shit that causes a person to reexamine racism. if people hate me well OK then maybe all those other bastards of my race are right. (Still don’t believe it. They are not right.) And they’re not right on the other side either, they have more right to it, though.
That’s crazy about the beer bottle bashing writer and what the victim said under his breath… Writers are satirical to the core so I’m not surprised. Glad you broke it up. Writers are many things… They seem to be violent to some degree, even more so with their pens–certainly alcoholic.
Only a cool dude would say, “The son of man comes eating and drinking.”
Christopher
LikeLike
PS Happy Birthday!
LikeLike
Hi Christopher
I read a few Burke novels back when I met him in person for a famous 15 minutes (or maybe it was 20). I remember his protagonist being extremely relatable, and I also remember the prose style – it seemed rough and tough and poetic all at the same time, a great combo.
Looking forward to reading the 2,300-word death-themed story inspired by/connected to Poe’s comment! That’s a good word length. O. Henry’s most famous tale (The Gift of the Magi) is almost exactly that length. Having a connection to Poe like that, even if “invisible,” is a great idea!! (Because even if it’s invisible it’s still there, which is awesome.)
Yes, writers do sometimes get violent with their pens. Back in the 18th cen., folks like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson sometimes needed to carry weapons in order to protect themselves from people they savaged in print. Pope was only four feet six inches tall and they still wanted to tear him to shreds! Johnson was a giant of a man but it didn’t stop folks from threatening him in print on occasion: “When you least expect it, expect it.” Edgar Allan Poe had a nickname in his own day – “The Hatchet Man.”
Everything you said about the spiritual civil war that’s going on in America right now even as we speak is brilliant, accurate, honest, and totally true, and as such, very well worth thinking about more deeply, which I will most certainly be doing!
Almost all the folks at the academic literary journals who bar the door to the paler males in the population all come from the higher socioeconomic strata of our society, too – we need a new kind of affirmative action based on economics, not skin color. Harvard, Yale and Stanford are filled and dominated with and by “minorities” – 99.999999% of whom come from very, very, very wealthy families, even if their skin tone is a bit different than the pale-faces among us. And that is true not just of Harvard and Yale, but also of every single institution of higher learning in this land. We need a new kind of Affirmative Action based on economic level, not skin tone. If you’re poor and you’ve got the chops, you get in for free – no matter your skin tone. If you’re rich and you ain’t got the chops, you don’t get in – no matter what color you happen to be at the moment. Everything in this land comes right down to the almighty dollar – and those who have are given more and more, while those who ain’t got nothin’ are given – the short end of the stick. True for white, black, red, brown, and yellow, all.
Hemingway called it – TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. He was very much in favor of taking from the HAVES and giving a little of it to the HAVE NOTS – that’s why the FBI was always following him around and burrowing into his business. And one reason (among many) why he moved to Cuba.
I will be thinking more about the things you said! THANKS for your honesty and excellent analysis of a very difficult and complex set of problems!
Dale
LikeLike
Hey Dale
Yes indeed and thank you!
It really is the rich vs poor. The status quo has shifted, and dirt poor white-o is left out in the cold.
Which helped bring these strange times. Many parallels with Nazi Germany. Hitler touted making Germany great again. He was elected. The rural peoples were offended by the sexual revolution. (Similar to all this trans biz, guys in women’s sports). The immigrant crisis. I.E Jews. The radical right ( fascist–real name) always gets the uptight rural people, who are isolated, to carry their water and clubs.
On a funner note maybe just as disturbing is James Lee Burke. Yes his writing does have a poetic tone to it, and he is a great writer of language! His stories are full of blood and terrible things like incest, pedophilia, murder and more murder, but I like how he describes his main guy as a recovering alcoholic and Vietnam vet. Quite human. His nature scenes are also incredible!
That’s a good way to put this invisible connection with Poe. These giants of literature really do carry a lot of weight. “The hatchet man” Poe that sounds interesting so I will want to check that out. It’s pretty amazing all the things you know about these writers! I learn something new every time I hear from you!
Christopher
LikeLike
Christopher
Thanks very much for your brilliant, and brilliantly worded, diagnosis of these strange times we are living in and through – and trying to survive.
I was reading up on good old Stalin. He said this to the Secret Police about Boris Pasternak, who at that point was a great poet only and had not yet written his great novel Doctor Zhivago. Stalin told the Secret Police to “leave this holy fool alone.” Then they arrested his beloved girlfriend instead.
Pasternak was free, but his girlfriend was in chains – just one of the things they did to her was force her to march up and down dark stairways, then locked her up in the morgue with all the uncovered dead bodies for a few days. She miscarried Pasternak’s child. Just like they knew she would. That’s how nasty it gets, and can get. Miraculously, Pasternak’s girlfriend survived her imprisonment and torture, was eventually released after Stalin’s death, and lived a long life.
Pasternak once said of Stalin, “At least he sometimes reached the clouds. Now we are ruled by MEDIOCRITIES.” (He knew Stalin personally as everyone knew everyone in the Moscow of those days.)
They did the same thing to the poet Anna Ahkmatova. They let her remain free, and imprisoned and tortured her son instead. Meanwhile, she was banned from publishing, forced to almost starve, and was constantly shadowed and harassed by the Secret Police, including bashing in her door in the middle of the night and rifling through her papers. Neither she nor Pasternak ever left Russia, even when given the chance. They chose to stay home and suffer instead of abandoning their homeland and giving it all up to The Evil Ones. It’s beyond a miracle that they both survived.
You are right to call these now in America people NAZIs. I’ve been studying scholarly materials about Nazi propaganda, all of it widely available on the internet and/or in the library.
The playbook is EXACTLY the same. The rallies, the outfits, the hats, the silly and nonsensical speeches spoken down to the lowest common denominator, the nonstop lying, the hatred, the usage of the media at all levels, the baseball cards, the superhero claims, the government takeovers, the ignorance of history, the anti-intellectualism, the anti-science, the refusal to question, the hatred of art, the targeting of minorities and gays, etc., are all EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS the Nazis did in the 1930s, leading up to none other than World War Two. Before he took power, and even after, many Germans considered Hitler little more than an outlandish buffoon, a nightmare cartoon, a terrible clown, a fool, and not a holy fool, just a fool.
I think here it won’t get as bad as Germany and Russia, here it will be more like a Latin American Dictatorship, which is bad enough, very much bad enough, but usually, not quite as bad as Germany with the Nazis and Russia with Stalin. On one level, our civil society is pretty strong in the USA, and there are still too many people who are against all of this, and I don’t think any of them will be changing their minds very soon. Hitler had 85% support. President Musk has 45% or less. And, the dude needs to lay off the amphetamines and dissociative drugs like his favorite, Special K. He’s as wasted as a Rock Star lately! If only he would use what he has for good and not ill. He doesn’t understand what and how things and persons survive in history. On that level, the dude has a very small , unoriginal brain. He’s on the wrong side of history – and doesn’t know it. A genius at business and a loser at being part of humanity.
Hitler was also a hard-core drug addict. His personal physician would dutifully follow him around and give him hourly injections of a combination of heroin, cocaine, and meth amphetamine, which the Germans invented and gave to all their soldiers. Literally taking injections of meth, coke, heroin on a sometimes hourly basis – and never sleeping. Now President Musk rocks on….
Let me know what you think…
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale
Thanks! I try to give your comments the justice they deserve. All very good and alarming.
First off I did a little research on “The Hatchet Man, EA Poe after you mentioned his nickname. I found a fictionalized short story called “The Fall of The Hatchet Man” on Wattpad.com. Some kind of writing site. It was a good read from an interesting perspective–rather haunting–almost like something EAP would write, himself.
Stalin said, smiling with that mutton chop mustache, “Beria is my Himmler.” Not the best people… Interesting about Pasternak suggesting Stalin “tried for the stars.” Almost redeeming…”
And speaking about redemption, excuse the jumping around, but I just got done with James Lee Burke’s “Swan Peak.” He took the most vile character “a raping sodomite” and turned him damn near into into John Wayne. Talk about a character arc! Almost terrifying, but he did it. He might be one of the best authors I’ve ever read! But being so popular the elites would probably try to down him. Like they do all the popular million-billion dollar novelists.
I’m surprised Pasternak could survive those monsters. I wonder what they would have done to Chekhov?
Purging the military is straight out of Stalin’s playbook. So it begins here… The easy firing of generals is a bad sign. There used to be more oversight when firing a general.
When GWB okay’d torture we crossed a line. And many more have been crossed, since. I’m not sure the country can survive J-6. The rule of law is getting weaker everyday.
The kangaroo courts with the vile screaming German judges may be just around the corner, or no judges at all. Probably the same thing.
Ironically in that context–The courts are all we have now, and the current admin is trying to ignore the court’s rulings. Congress is his–bye bye Medicaid, environment, the list goes on–more or less everything a Democrat would care about.
It’s the rich vs the poor. Those are the real politics. Everything else when it comes to the Republican party is smoke. They are simply against poor people and the middle class too.
I used to tow the line about getting rid of assault rifles like a good Democrat, but now the second amendment is paramount. If they come for your guns now look the fuck out!
I wonder how many fired government workers voted for this guy? Like shitting in your own mess kit. One of my Dad’s favorite sayings. RIP.
Yes it is a playbook from the Nazis for sure. I was familiar with Hitler’s drug use, and leave it to the Germans to invent meth. They are an inventive bunch, and probably would have won WWII if Hitler hadn’t interfered and allocated so much of the war effort toward the Final Solution. It started with letting all of those Brits escape Dunkirk, not to mention attacking the Soviet Union. I do admire the Germans. The real Germans. They are incredibly good at war. You want those fuckers on your side. We need to send them to Ukraine and mop up those Russians and North Koreans, Pull the dust covers off of those Tiger tanks, get that black cross flying again. But don’t send us–probably don;t have to worry about that unless we’re fighting with oligarchs.
I part ways with Hitler. He was a very strange man. A vegetarian too. Kind of progressive on that one. Pea soup was one of his faves. A
megaphone for a mouth–a bonafide otherworldly orator –maybe he was “the great communicator.” He talked the language for sure. A good point you made about him having so much support. We’re not Germany, but what will we become? I hope it’s not El Salvador. or Argentina. They learned there death squad moves from the SS that fled on the Vatican’s “Rat Line” to South America.
This is why people need to study history. It repeats. Nothing new under the sun. But do they want to educate themselves? Casting their votes like the blind fools.
This Musk thing is also very strange. So blatant how the presidency is bought and sold. I saw the Mathew Perry story the more money you have…Special K diet is not good.
Christopher
LikeLiked by 1 person
Christopher
Thanks for paying such great attention to my often-transitionless, sometimes stream of consciousness ramblin’s…I would write better if I could figure out how!
And I’ve said it before and will say it again, your letters, comments, and stories are absolutely some of my very favorite reading material of all these days…brilliant, accurate, original, well-worded, and most of all: words full of THE TRUTH. The Human, not robot, Truth.
That sounds like a cool Poe find, AND, I’m glad to hear Burke has done good! I’ll check out some more of his novels soon.
I think if literary souls like us hold steady in the middle of the country (or on the edges of the country), the USA will be fine eventually…in many ways this IS The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Even the King Kong of Snake Oil Salesmen can’t take that away from us.
As Jack Kerouac said in “SKID ROW WINE”:
“Coulda gone into business and ranted and / believed that God was concerned about my success / Instead I squatted in lonesome alleyways / And nobody saw me, just my bottle / and what they saw of it was empty / and I did it in cornfields & graveyards / to be dark eye solitary nerve watcher / of the world’s whirling diamond.”
Stay tuned tomorrow for 1,422 words on growing up intoxicated and unconquerable in the Middle West, Mark Twain, and Abraham Lincoln…You are one of the VERY best readers for this piece tomorrow because of your already-knowledge about Abe Lincoln…
Dale
Yeah and besides crystal meth the Germans also produced perhaps the greatest word/artist of the Western World since Leonardo da Vinci and Shakespeare, i.e. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of the eternal poem FAUST AND FAUST PART TWO and five thousand pages plus of other great works…an artist equal to, or greater than, Mozart and Beethoven…
LikeLike
Hey Dale
Thanks so much for the kind words!
I think there is an art to commenting and I’m positive you could teach a master class on it! Great stuff erupts from your keyboard (no bouts a-doubt it). Hopefully that translated to no doubt about.
I hear what you are saying about a stream of consciousness… When I’m writing these comments–I sort of cringe when I read them back to myself, and I wonder, should I take more care with my writing? Do others judge me on my errors, since these comments are the next thing to published content. Then I’m like oh-well–fret not, “Ride Captain Ride,” Blues Image.
“King Kong of snake oil,” ha! Yes we are still free. They underestimate how freedom has been bred into us. A biological attitude. The citizen understands freedom in the dirt and hard scrabble of life that rich people, who are protected, can never grasp.
Skid Row Wine, Wow that’s powerful! It kind of reminds of the Beatles “The Fool on the Hill.”
Speaking of German writers. There was one I liked, Heinrich Boll. I heard about Faust my whole life and have never read it. Shame. I’m not well versed in German classical music, but I liked Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries.”
I think one of the greatest short stories I’ve read was “Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov. That is an incredible story of insanity.
I looked forward to your Mark Twain and Lincoln in the Midwest!
Christopher
LikeLike
Happy Birthday, Dale, and thank you for this hymn of praise for Lennon. He was my hero too. People used to talk about what they were doing when they heard about the Kennedy assassination; me, I remember clearly the day Lennon died. He wasn’t a perfect knight, but he never gave up the quest.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Mick!
And thank you so very, very much!
Your comment about him not being a perfect knight who never gave up the quest is absolutely perfect. It boils all the truth down into one golden nugget of an image that just made me feel a whole lot better.
What you said about the death of JFK vs. the death of Lennon also really, truly hit home. I had never thought of this before until you pointed it out just now: but you’re right, in my life I’ve spent a lot more time being affected by the death of Lennon than I ever felt by the death of JFK. Part of that is because I was alive when Lennon was killed. More of that is because Lennon was an artist, and JFK was a politician (a great politician perhaps, but still a politician).
THANK YOU for your great, and enlightening, commentary!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
Food for thought. Lots of literature comparisons here. John Lennon was an excellent songwriter when he wrote with McCartney and I agree Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll are similar with their wit “I Am The Walrus” comes to mind. Bob Dylan is the only songwriter who’s won a Nobel Prize, showing recognition of the cross-over power between music and literature in the sixties and seventies. John Lennon was a musician, a singer and lyricist rather than a poet, Dylan in my opinion more of a poet than a musician. Maria Muldaur sang an interesting version of John The Revelator, by the way, titled Jon the Generator.
LikeLike
Harrison
Thanks very much for reading my work and commenting with thoughtful feedback. You always make great points.
I agree totally with your point about Lennon as more of a lyricist and singer, and Dylan as more of a poet. Lennon can become very poetic at times, so maybe a good term for him (the most accurate term) would be “literary lyricist.” Yes, I like that. Literary lyricist! Literature, especially beat literature, and rock and roll have so much to do with one another. In his later life, Johnny Cash took to calling himself “beat,” even saying in one interview, “I’m a beat writer,” meaning putting himself in the category with Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg. Some might not believe it at first blush, but it’s actually totally true when you think about it.
Other literary lyricists of the modern era include Grace Slick, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Eminem, Lana Del Rey, etc. All of them write lyrics that are extremely literary – but that seem to be, after all, lyrics, and NOT poems. Some of them can write OK poems sometimes. But mostly, they write literary lyrics, not pure poems. You’re totally right about this! Springsteen is another one.
Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan are the two writers I know of who are TRULY poets, and not “just” literary lyricists. At the same time, when you remove all the sound, voice, music, and instruments, and place the lyrics or poems of Bob or Leonard beside the poems of Robert Frost or T.S. Eliot, I think it does become apparent that EVEN BOB AND LEONARD are much more literary lyricists than they are PURE POETS. I don’t know of any Dylan lyrics that can truly stand up to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” IF the sound, the voice, the music is removed. Therefore, as pure poet, Eliot is better than Dylan. And so is Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Philip Larkin, too.
All art is agonistic, but on another level, no one ever “wins,” as in a real sport. Can we really say that Hamlet and Falstaff are better than Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, or vice versa? (I don’t think so.)
It might also be well to call Lennon, in all fairness, a kind of oral poet, since many of his lines and phrases, as with Leonard and Dylan, and Neil Young too, have entered the language. Either way, we’re lucky to have all these folks enriching the English language in various ways.
They say that John Lennon was obsessed with Dylan, and that the opposite also was/is true. They’ll be in the pantheon together until the Robots kill us all off and take over Planet Earth – and who knows, maybe by then even the Robots will know how to rock out to Dylan, Leonard, and John, and the human species who created them only to be destroyed will now live on in the “minds” of the Robots who have taken over! (LOL…)
THANKS again for thought-provoking and supportive commentary, Harrison! Totally appreciate it.
Dale
LikeLiked by 2 people
Literary lyricists compared and contrasted with pure poets …. very interesting.
LikeLike
This is superb, thoughtful, and incisive run through Lennon’s music. He was an absolute genius and still missed. Of all singers and artists none more than John Lennon makes me wonder what he would have gone on to do.
LikeLike
Paul
Thanks for reading and commenting. I always look forward to what you have to say.
That’s a great point about what he might have done, and worth speculating upon. Sometimes I think he might have gone on to compose more books and write some great prose, maybe even short stories or a short novel!
Thanks again!
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale,
So sorry my man that it has taken me so long to comment!!
Life and all that – Not in a happy place and hating work!!!
BUT – A few comments I wanted to make. I love Lennon’s work. ‘Woman’ is brilliant and as clever as Billy Joel’s, ‘She’ll Always Be A Woman To Me.’
‘Imagine’ is the best simplification of life although, I think Freddie maybe asked it better in ‘Is This The World We Created’ ‘The Works’ was a tremendous album but their last two which were produced in Switzerland were heart-breaking.
I digress!! Going back to Lennon, I wonder what your thoughts are on ‘Imagine’?? I had an argument with a guy that I sometimes meet in the pub – He stated that the video was an abomination due to Lennon wearing a Saville Row Suit, in a Mansion and playing a Grand Piano whilst stating ‘Imagine, there’s no possessions’.
I think he had a point but by fuck do I like to argue so I stated that it was all about irony!!!
I think that was the same day we got chucked out when he stated that I was a tit for not voting and I told him he was a cunt for voting!!!
HAH! That’s another story!!!
I think I read somewhere that Lennon was great pals with Harry Nielson??
And was it not his killer (Mark Chapman????) that thought he was being narrated in the book ‘The Catcher In The Rye’?????
Brilliant. informative and entertaining as always my fine friend.
Hugh
LikeLike
Hugh
I hope things have gotten better or are getting better, at least. When it comes to difficulties with work, I can sympathize. I’ve had my fair share and then some of difficulties with and at work, right up to and including my last job which didn’t end well in 2021. The boss and I were about to strangle each other at one point. Good thing I quit before he fired me, or he was about to fire me, I intuited said fact, took it for granted, and let him say it first then told him, “It’s okay, I was planning on quitting anyway.” Then the bastard did all he could to block my unemployment insurance and this was when I was already only making the tiny salary they pay teachers at Catholic schools.
I’m not Catholic but I taught at a Catholic school for three years, all Mexican students.
The name of it was Saint Leonard.
I always found it ironic, and comforting, that the school was called Saint Leonard – it always made me think of Leonard Cohen, of course.
And Saint Leonard is the patron saint of prisoners, depressed people, addicts and addicted people, political prisoners, prisoners of war and other captives, women in labor, horses, and criminals, so it felt very appropriate on that level.
Now that you mention it, it may be a tad bit ironic that Lennon would dress up in a nice suit and sit at an expensive piano in a mansion while singing about no possessions, but like you, I have a hard time accepting that such irony escaped him, a master of irony.
He also appeared in public naked on several occasions without a piano and not in a mansion, so maybe this makes up for all his other sins.
Maybe your acquaintance who was angry at him for being rich would have been happier if he dressed in rags, lived in a mud hut, and only played the spoons.
Then again, that too would have been rather ironic under the circumstances so I think we need to give Mr. Lennon a break. He did what he could do. He didn’t create the world, and it’s still here long after he isn’t. I don’t think we can blame folks like John Lennon for the sins of the world, and my guess is he thought about his own wealth a lot less than a lot of his angry detractors do.
It’s also worth pointing out that the super-wealthy are not necessarily in a great spot. They can’t trust anyone and every single person they know is out to get something from them, usually. They are seen as walking bank accounts, not human beings. They suffer their own level of dehumanization sometimes (more than sometimes), just like the rest of us. Not that I don’t support wealth redistribution – I very much do. It ain’t right that some are starving and some individuals own more than entire nations do. We all need to stop worshiping Moloch (money) so much…
Thanks, Hugh!
Dale
PS, When I say “Moloch” I mean the wicked god who sacrificed children…
LikeLike