(EW*): Always, No, Sometimes Think It's Me, But You Know When It's A Dream

I think a no, I mean a yes, but it's all wrong
That is I think I disagree

This song popped in my head and this train of thought left the station before it could be derailed by the later day's events.

Strawberry Fields. As a child I disliked the circular lyrics, the inexplicably monotonous sing-song of the chorus, the wildly vacillating lyrical tempo--I didn't sound right and easy and kind like some of their other songs.

As I grew, my love for the Beatles in their 907 Glorious Forms grew as well. Strawberry Fields seemed like another not-so-secret drug ode. (In my arrogant youth I also dismissed Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4 as pandering. Oh, the assured omnipotence of youth!) I heard there was a plaque somewhere, Times Square? Whatever.

But the lyrics had wormed their way into my personal soundtrack. I owned not only solo John Lennon albums, I owned Julian Lennon albums.  (PS, Julian, it's none of my business, but I can't help but feel that your dad was kind of a tool. I'm glad it didn't stop you from going into music. There's a darkness in the air that seems to guide me.)

And from Papa Lennon, I was grooving to tasty treats like,
 
No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right

But it wasn't until today that chanced to look up Strawberry Fields lyrics and stumble across an annotated version. 

I didn't know it was about Lennon's child hood. I didn't know it was about the ineffable sadness of knowing how profoundly different you are from the other kids. I didn't know that the title shared its name with a park Lennon frequented as a youth. I didn't know John Lennon was scared to sing it, as he considered it one of his most personal songs.

To quote Lennon himself:

I was different all my life. The second verse goes, ‘No one I think is in my tree.’ Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius — ‘I mean it must be high or low,’ the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn’t see

I fully recognized that quote could be interpreted in a grandiose, arrogant way. It certainly seems to lean that way, no? But that's not how I took it. I took it as that terrible and constant feeling that you can't talk about the things you think with your peers--you scare them. You can't use logic or science in this debate, it makes your friends cry. You are different and you know it and if you're lucky some well meaning adult doesn't take a special interest in you because we all know how well that's gonna go, outcome irrelevant. 

Well, shut my mouth wide open: I just made a profoundly emotional connection to John Lennon--somebody I would never consider to have anything in common with me. I'd like to believe I'm like a lot of clever, witty, talented people, but it never occurred to me to be able to relate to Lennon.

So I told you all that just in case it has any bearing on what followed, which followed so very quickly I had no choice but to consider it a Result.

********************************************

It gets harder than it should be. Even though it's probably you making it hard in the first place, you just can't get away from it.

In my objective assessments, I feel like a sponge. In my self pitying moments, I consider myself a sin-eater.

It's just People: there's so many of them and they are all bleeding emotion in every direction and their thoughts are so loud and their sadness and anger is even louder. So many people, so many stories.

And you can't respond to all that. They'd cart you away in the next available straight jacket. Sometimes I wonder if insanity is just the absence of the ability to control all the input. Besides being institutionalized for trying to communicate with Everything All At Once, you also wouldn't then be able to accomplish anything your needed to do. Ever again.

So you fake it. You chant litanies in your head that become magical wards against interloping thoughts. You fall into a meditation and don't let it touch you. You put on armor and remind yourself to keep breathing.

Unfortunately, and perhaps what drives me here today, is the realization that you can put on your armor and shield yourself from Humanity, but you're still going to Witness it. You're Marked. All the defense systems in the world can't save you, there will be a chink here and there and all the back-burnered pain of Humanity will come surging in. 

Maybe it will dissipate in the wisps of uncomfortable dreams you don't remember, but that leave you feeling unrested. Could take the form of one too many beers and subsequent hangover pain that mutes the thoughts, but also serves the urge for penitent self-flagellation. You find a way to distract yourself, you choose a different poison.

But it's killing you all the same. The pills to stop the pain are just as harmful as the pain itself. Slow poisons, bad risks, self loathing, rage--whichever or all, you're going down.

*EW = Experimental Writing