Just awoke from a dream so vivid I'm writing it down. I was newly wed and listening to various Beatles songs with my new husband. "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds" began to play and I started sobbing. The song had such a powerful effect on me it was as if I was hearing the song for the first time. I remember thinking in the dream,"Fuck. Who needs drugs? This song is a drug. And The Beatles are still alive and will always be alive inside this song."
A few months ago I bought Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl. I made my son, who was eight at the time, listen to "A Day in The Life" and "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds." I thought for sure his mind would be BLOWN. He sat there with a bored expression on his face and started making weird little distracted sounds. I said,"No. Show respect. This is one of the greatest albums ever recorded. You have to hear every note of this song. I'm just making you listen to this song and one other. When you get older you can listen to the entire album on your own." He was very relieved to return to his video games after listening to those two songs. Maybe he'll never be a Beatles fan. Maybe we have to find great music on our own. But I did turn him onto "Love Will Tear Us Apart" years ago. And at one time he loved "Spanish Bombs."
My son's middle name comes from my favorite uncle, whom I lost to lung cancer in 1999. My uncle gave me his Magical Mystery Tour album when I was in kindergarten. "I Am The Walrus" lit a bonfire inside my mind. It terrified, repulsed and fascinated me. That song planted a seed that grew me into the manic writer I am today. I share my dreams and fantasies and fears and compulsions and sad little love affairs with anyone who stumbles across this spastic space, this glittery unicorn diary with the busted lock. To be a writer you absolutely have to have a functioning ego and a touch of narcissism. You have to assume the world gives a damn about the stuff that floats through the hallucinatory rivers of your hopeless romantic mind.
You have to have energy to write. You have to have energy to fuck. You have to have energy to love, really deeply truly madly love, a motherfucker who may or may not deserve it. It never is about deserving. It's about taking, giving, allowing. Needing. Wanting. I'll never be a Buddhist. I'll always grapple with desire. It takes energy, massive energy, to record an album like Sgt. Pepper's. So thank you, George Martin and John Lennon and George Harrison and Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney and everyone else involved in the endeavor.
A few months ago I bought Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl. I made my son, who was eight at the time, listen to "A Day in The Life" and "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds." I thought for sure his mind would be BLOWN. He sat there with a bored expression on his face and started making weird little distracted sounds. I said,"No. Show respect. This is one of the greatest albums ever recorded. You have to hear every note of this song. I'm just making you listen to this song and one other. When you get older you can listen to the entire album on your own." He was very relieved to return to his video games after listening to those two songs. Maybe he'll never be a Beatles fan. Maybe we have to find great music on our own. But I did turn him onto "Love Will Tear Us Apart" years ago. And at one time he loved "Spanish Bombs."
My son's middle name comes from my favorite uncle, whom I lost to lung cancer in 1999. My uncle gave me his Magical Mystery Tour album when I was in kindergarten. "I Am The Walrus" lit a bonfire inside my mind. It terrified, repulsed and fascinated me. That song planted a seed that grew me into the manic writer I am today. I share my dreams and fantasies and fears and compulsions and sad little love affairs with anyone who stumbles across this spastic space, this glittery unicorn diary with the busted lock. To be a writer you absolutely have to have a functioning ego and a touch of narcissism. You have to assume the world gives a damn about the stuff that floats through the hallucinatory rivers of your hopeless romantic mind.
You have to have energy to write. You have to have energy to fuck. You have to have energy to love, really deeply truly madly love, a motherfucker who may or may not deserve it. It never is about deserving. It's about taking, giving, allowing. Needing. Wanting. I'll never be a Buddhist. I'll always grapple with desire. It takes energy, massive energy, to record an album like Sgt. Pepper's. So thank you, George Martin and John Lennon and George Harrison and Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney and everyone else involved in the endeavor.
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