"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night..." -- Kely

When I was a college senior, I took a course titled “Fielding and Byron.” I remember telling my professor something along the lines of, “I just can’t get into Tom Jones.” She looked down at me and replied, “You’re not old enough, not ready. Read it when you’re thirty and we’ll talk.”

I was insulted. How condescending! A sophisticated 21-year-old English major like me – well versed in the ways of the world…I could write my own damn picaresque based on the last two years alone...if she only knew – was “old enough” for anything she could throw at me. I even wrote my major essay on “Tom’s Naiveté.” That'll show her…

…that I was the queen of Unintentional Irony. She was, as usual, right, even though I “got into it” quite well just three years later. That professor has been a colleague and is now a friend, and we had a big laugh about that exchange a few years ago when I reminded her of it. Sometimes you’re not ready for a book; it’s just that simple. And sometimes you’re ready again, and again, and again and it’s new every time.

While we may well be able to do dispassionate analyses of our favorite flavor of art (and – burn me as a heretic – sometimes I doubt that we can ever put ourselves outside our analyses), and while we may be ashamed to admit it, we do see ourselves in books, paintings, songs. As a writer, I struggle with taking myself out of the work so a reader can put himself into it. But this entry is getting away from me.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably old enough to remember records. The kind you played on a turntable. The kind you stacked on a spindle and let drop while you lay on your bed and thought about your life in all its miseries and triumphs. Maybe this is something only girls do, but I doubt it. I know enough audiophile men to suspect otherwise. Perhaps you’re back there in your head right now, thinking of a particular song.

If so, track it down soon and play it. Listen to it the way you did back then. Notice the differences in the places it touches you, in the messages it holds. Let go of the part of your intellect that says, “Well, this line doesn’t exactly capture my existential ennui” or “You think your heart is broken now, singer, wait until you express those feelings to the person in question and see how you feel then.” Close your eyes. Be patient. It’s going to be a very different song, but the experience of listening while open to reverie is liberating.

Lennon's Vision -- Jennie

The Oregon Cabaret Theater bustled Halloween night with “A Brief History Of White Music,” as three young African Americans infused Elvis, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles with gospel, blues, and even reggae.

The full house wondered “Who Put the Bomp?” and went “Downtown.” It was a toe-tapping, thigh-slapping, sing-along-time.

Until the second-to-last song.

The music stopped, the stage went dark, and one sad, sultry voice crooned, “Imagine there’s no heaven…”

The audience stood up. It stood up and wept.


One foggy December morning when I was nine, my grandmother and I drove through San Francisco. I don’t remember where we were going, but I’ll never forget Grandma pulling to the side of Noriega Avenue, in shock over John Lennon’s sudden death.

It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry.


Almost three decades later, people are still crying, not so much now over the loss of the legend, but more, perhaps, over his call for peace and its shrinking possibility.

With the War in Iraq, consumerism and plunging economy, global poverty, religious intolerance, and an orphaned environment, the world is further from Lennon’s dream than ever.

If he were crushed over the state of things then, he’d be devastated now.

The Cabaret audience felt it for him. There was a sixty-something year-old man, standing with folded arms and misty glasses. There was a wide-eyed preschooler, born after the War began, who has not lived one single day of peace in America. We wanted to “imagine,” but it was hard.

This song was a call to keep trying.

Here is what I know: two years ago in New York City, I pointed out The Dakota to my kids: Lennon’s house, the place where he was shot. Torches burn by the door. They burn, despite wind, and rain, and vandals.