Strawberry Fields: Everything is Real, and Nothing to Get Hung About

He was always my favorite Beatle. The very definition of cool, with his chestnut hair, brown eyes and penile nose. I was a tween when he rocked Ed Sullivan's stage and the whole American world, so I missed the significance of the nose until much later. But my parents and I gathered around our cycloptic TV in its massive oak cabinet to see what all the broo-hah was about. These four young men being called mop-tops who had girls screaming all around the world... what the hell? My Dad had been a sailor. He was well-acquainted with the stories they told about Liverpool and what a dive it was, so he was skeptical, to say the least, about these Liverpudlians.

Correction: my parents were appalled; long hair on men singing rock and roll, the "devil's music"? And whoever saw suits with no lapels, anyway? They shook their heads every time they sang "oooooo!"----and the girls in the audience went ka-razy.

I, on the other hand, was mesmerized. Especially by the guy with the big nose. There he was with his legs spread apart in an aggressive stance, wearing boots that Cuban guys down the street would have killed for...and he was rockin' back and forth on his heels to the beat while he wailed "Well, shake it up baby, now!" He WAS so cool...and I was hooked. For life.

Later as I stretched out my tentative wings of rebellion, he was the archetype all we teens revered. Funny thing about fame; the bigger it gets, the more the people who put you there think they own you. Or at least know you. This was no less true for John Lennon.

But he loved New York. Embraced it just like becoming a US citizen. He had an entire wardrobe of New York tee-shirts and caps, and he wore a lot of black...New York bIack. I noticed that in nearly every Rolling Stone pic of him they printed. He loved being able to meld into the city's anonymity. After the Beatles broke up, he and Yoko quietly bought a rambling apartment in the Dakota building, directly across from Central Park. They could be seen walking the Park every day.

So it was only fitting that when he was murdered (I believe, assassinated---but I won't say by which alphabet agency because it may be more than one), the City of New York in conjunction with his widow dedicated a segment of Central Park directly in front of the Dakota to his memory. The cover picture shows the sign that announces that you have arrived. How fitting that the sub-park is tear-shaped.

Here's a closeup to show it better.

If you click on the cover picture of the sign, you'll be able to read its contents. You'll see that Yoko envisioned this to be a "Quiet Place", where people would meditate, hopefully on John's life and his oft-stated vision of world peace. You'll also see an injunction against musical instruments being used within that area.

Bear that in mind as you look at the next picture.

Sure enough, here's a busker. Three guesses whose music he's playing. No one gave him any money while I watched him. Moreover, he got a mere spattering of applause. Most of the people near him were busy eating, talking----and littering. So much for Strawberry Fields being a meditative area.

For those unfamiliar with musician jargon, a busker is a person who plays in open-air locations for tips that are usually thrown into his or her open guitar case. I would encounter only one other busker on my vacation. He would be playing trumpet in the town square of Avignon, France.

And then there was these two...at first glance you might think this picture came from Woodstock or the Altamonte fiasco. But you would be mistaken. This tie-dye adorned couple was not your run-of-the-mill bohemians. Nope, these two are (gulp!) CAPITALISTS!!!!! And they were shamelessly hawking their handmade, homemade tie-dye quilts. In Strawberry Fields. And the NYPD who were present in the sub-park turned a blind and jaded eye while they did so. Apparently they don't respect Yoko Ono's wishes either. I think that cat in the hat's even got a beer in his hand.

But here's the names of some people who did respect Yoko's wishes: the list of donors who helped fund the Strawberry Fields project. This is what wealthy people do: they use other people's money to get their own way. Did you know that Yoko's father was one of the richest bankers in Japan? No wonder she knew how to quadruple his net worth. And that was while he was alive. God only knows how much more money she profited from his death.

For some subliminal reason, I was really moved by this little girl at the mosaic. I am sure there's a metaphor there, but I don't really see it. I have some vague suggestions in my head of the purity of the child standing on the purity of John's idealistic vision...but somehow it seems like it is teetering on the edge of schmaltz to me, so I haven't let that concept develop in my mind.

It is perhaps obligatory that I close with The Mosaic. It IS moving. It does impel you to be quiet as you study it, with its juxtaposed geometrics of light and darkness that are not unlike John's soul itself. It does guide your memory to the night of Dec. 8, 1980, when NBC News interrupted Saturday Night Live with the news that John Lennon had been shot...if you were alive and sentient that night.

But I hate that song. I came to hate it the night that the club I used to hang out hosted a Communist Party USA Party. The Alabama head of the CPUSA asked my friend to play it, and introduced it as "The Anthem of the American Communist Revolution".

I don't know if John wrote it to promote communism, or if his utopian dream was naively ignorant of how communism has always played out historically. All I know is that communists claim the song as theirs---and that has made me find the song invidious.

The real Strawberry Fields is in Liverpool, anyway.