This morning, I’m free writing and thinking of the past week. I’ve been so busy, I can barely keep up with anything. My newsletter is two weeks late, and my diary is way behind. In the past, this would cause me great stress. But I’ve been stumbling along by keeping forward physical motion, good cooking habits, yoga stretches, and time to myself to just think.
BUT AT THE PARK
I invited a woman to sit next to me after she asked for “Here, There and Everywhere.” She was really shy but had a bright smile that never stopped, beaming at us from across the mosaic circle. She finally acceded and immediately began blushing. The crowd loved her.
I sang to her with my arm around her. Behind her glasses, I realized that two steady streams of tears, unbroken, were pouring out. She hugged me more. When the song was over, all she said was, “That was our song. Thank you for bringing him back.”
As I write this, I’m bawling my eyes out. At that moment, I felt like a conduit. I wasn’t intruding or manipulating her. I was simply the vessel of the song, the empty space into which she could safely pour her emotions. IOW, I wasn’t crying along with her. It all happens too fast for me to get that immediately involved.
Here’s another one. A little girl. Maybe 6 or 7 or 8. She still spoke babytalk. She walked up, perfectly composed, and made a request. I didn’t quite understand. Then I heard. “New York, New York.” You want “New York, New York?” She nodded yes.
I said, “We only sing Beatles songs. So we…” Then I looked into the little girl’s eyes and just went for broke, “Start spreading the news. I’m leaving today!” I thought that’s enough. It’s sweet. Done my duty.
After a song or two, she comes back over and this time the mom, very sweet, pretty, unadorned mid-30s perhaps, says, “She wants to SING “New York New York.” and then she holds up a glass bottle with very white grainy dirt plugged with a cork. It looked like it came from an old West apothecary.
“These are her grandfather’s ashes and he loved New York and The Beatles. And she wanted to do this for him.”
I said, “Let’s do it.”
She climbed up onto the bench next to me in my bright pink Sgt. Pepper jacket, I held the mic to her and the tiniest voice came out.
“Baby, I'm from New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothin' you can't do
Now you're in New York”
The Alicia Keyes version not the Liza Minnelli Kander & Ebb version. You should have seen my face. This tiny angelic raven-haired child singing about the concrete jungle.)
Then, as if she were being directed in a movie where she was perfectly rehearsed, she thanked me and climbed down from the bench to a massive ovation from the crowd. She barely noticed. Her mom, blushing from all the attention, leaned over and thanked me as she red-facedly followed her off.
That happened. If it were in a movie, you wouldn’t believe it.
This week I got a reliable wireless connector to the mic and suddenly I’m way more free to interact with people.
And our IMAGINE Circle is much easier because when I go around asking where everyone is from, I’m closer and can make a quick comment.
Today I started asking people, “Why did you come here? What were you looking for?”
I didn’t make them answer. But the shadow of war lingers everywhere and the peace movement feels like it’s lost its voice. Everything these days is about war. Fight to win. Fight for viewers. Fight for attention. It goes to the core of how we are being led to think.
You barely have time to loathe this week’s villain before the new one is set up for the job.
Now during Spring Break, we’re getting big groups of school kids. College and high school. For the most part, none of them know John Lennon or The Beatles. But the mosaic is on the tour route and you pass through it going to other places in the park.
What Gavin and I must look like to them. Two old guys in bright pink and blue satin military jackets, with glittering gold epaulets and fringe sitting in the sun with a guitar. We’re not really an official anything there. But Yoko wanted a living memorial with music and that’s what we do.
For the tour guide, they’re trying to keep a pace. Sometimes they ignore us because they have a speech, which they give, including the fact that it's smaller than it looks in photos. And then they say, “You have a moment for pictures.”
But this week, the first guide just turned it over to us like we were an attraction ourselves.
I just blurted out what the circle is for, to imagine a better world. I tell them how John said you have to create, in your mind, the world you want to live in. Then make that world happen. Looking into those young faces, the reality of it all smacked me in the face. I kept thinking, "Good luck, kids!"
Then I got up and led them around the circle and we sang Imagine together. It was beautiful.
I hope they’re teaching The Beatles music in schools.
I'm excited that the sun has come out. The world will be passing by us and I can't wait to meet them.
Steve
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