Posted on 08/06/2007 5:56:23 AM PDT by John Galt 72
‘Imagine Piano’ Celebrates John Lennon’s Absurd Magnum Opus
By Matt Carrothers
August 6, 2007
Forget ground surges, new military leaders, tapping terrorist’s phone calls, free elections, training Iraqi soldiers to defend their own country and any other tactic that is helping the U.S. defeat Islamic fascists. British pop music singer George Michael and his boyfriend Kenny Goss have a better idea to bring peace to the world – John Lennon’s piano.
Michael owns the piano on which Lennon composed the song “Imagine”. Accompanied by white-gloved attendants and a music choreographer, the piano is touring the U.S. as the centerpiece of Michael’s “The Imagine Piano Peace Project.” As Wall Street Journal writer Ann Zimmerman notes, “This Steinway upright piano is showing up at some of the nation’s most grisly sites of violence, death and destruction . . . all sites of cruelty and murder.”
Caroline True, the project’s choreographer, says on the project’s web site, “Kenny and George’s deepest wish is to imagine a world of peace, a world without violence.” And, likely, a world where undercover police officers in Los Angeles public park men’s rooms have the decency to knock first.
Lennon’s piano has visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, the Oklahoma City Memorial and Virginia Tech University. Zimmerman wrote that a Virginia Tech graduate student spent over an hour with the piano. The student played a song she composed for a murdered friend, and described the hour as “symbolic and healing.”
The piano also visited the Texas State Penitentiary in an apparent protest of a death row inmate’s execution. Texas convict James Clark was put to death on April 11, 2007 for the 1993 robbery, rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl. When asked for his last statement before the execution Clark said, “Uh, I don’t know. Um, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know. I didn’t know anybody was there. Howdy.”
With the execution of James Clark, the death penalty maintains its 100 percent success rate of stopping a robber/murderer/rapist from ever robbing, murdering or raping again. In other words, the Texas justice system gave peace a chance.
“Imagine”, the anthem of every aging-leftist hippie, is perhaps the most absurd song ever written. Lennon’s magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriter’s own ignorance of the forms of government, economic systems and faith traditions necessary to produce the peace and brotherhood the so-called smart Beatle dreamed of.
The song begins, “Imagine there’s no heaven/It’s easy if you try.” Judeo-Christian values inspired America’s founding fathers, and remain the bedrock of every free, economically prosperous and peace-seeking nation.
Once Heaven is imagined away, Lennon then envisioned a one-world government: “Imagine there’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too/Imagine all the people/Living life in peace.”
Lennon’s folly was that the utopia he envisioned would result in utter chaos. Our Cold War victory over the Soviet Union exposed the horrors of totalitarian regimes that attempt to eradicate religion and economic freedom. Peace results when the citizens of orderly representational republics engage daily in free-market commerce with each other and across national boundaries.
Continuing on this communist rant, the song says, “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man.”
With no possessions, how will individuals generate the capital and income needed to alleviate greed or hunger? The collectivist system has been tried, and it has failed every time.
Lennon concluded his hallucinogenic diatribe with, “I hope someday you’ll join us/And the world will live as one.”
Notice that the social-engineering dreamers never want to “live as one” in a world dominated by peaceable, capitalist, free-trading republics rooted in the rule of law and Judeo-Christian values. Ironically, John Lennon is seen in one of his most famous photographs leaning against a wall with his arms folded, a crucifixion necklace around his neck, wearing a white t-shirt that reads, “New York City.”
New York City. As in, the capital city of capitalism.
Another ironic twist in “The Imagine Piano Peace Project” is that the piano has only stopped at American sites of violence, death, destruction, cruelty and murder. Again, history shows that the most violent, destructive and cruelest places on Earth have existed – and continue to exist – under the communist and totalitarian regimes Lennon’s most famous song exalts. Atheist, one-world loving liberals have always loathed the U.S., but despite their shrill protests they never seem quite ready to leave the protected confines of their own private Dakotas.
Instead of writing dopey, acid-induced tributes to Godless, authoritarian utopias, John Lennon should have got back to where he once belonged – writing great songs with Paul, George and Ringo about holding hands and the evil taxman.
I blame Yoko.
© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Remember when they had to stop singing Happy Birthday at restaurants because Sir Paul owned the rights?
I keep thinking “Imagine there was never a Lennon.....”
One of the few small satisfactions that came out of 9/11 is that all the mindless FM veg-head stations immediately put Imagine into heavy, heavy rotation. They were then inundated by an avalanche of calls telling them to get that POS off the air. Imagine was, blissfully, not heard on NYC radio for at least two years.
It's making a comeback now, unfortunately.
Has the piano been to Ground Zero? Seem that a pretty violent act happened there nearly six years ago. Has It been to the Pentagon? That field in Pennsylvania?
Did it also sign it's autograph for her?
Continuing on this communist rant, the song says, “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man.”
No possessions? Like Lennon’s expensive piano? Or his NYC condo? Or his hundreds upon hundreds of millions in cold hard cash? Those possessions?
2)Atheist one-worlders never seem to have the guts to suggest that mystical Third World nationalists give up their sovereignty. What kind of "one world government" do they really envision--Israel and America???
Nothing to kill or die for
In other words, nothing of any value.
You cannot coexist with somebody who wants you dead.
Let's face it, we all do.
New Tagline Material:
You cannot coexist with somebody who wants you dead.
Nihilism.
If there is nothing you are willing to die for, you also have no real reason to continue living.
Which reminds me of my next point...
Don’t Do Drugs!
Who doesn't?
LMAO.
chapman?
Thank You Thank You Thank You! I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly!
Lennon’s magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriter’s own ignorance of the forms of government, economic systems and faith traditions necessary to produce the peace and brotherhood the so-called smart Beatle dreamed of.
Hey he was just a rich musician, who by the way, supported the IRA amongst his other philanthropy.
imagine no possessions. so i guess that would make it the people’s piano. i want to play twinkle twinkle little star on it, but they wont let me. im sure its owned by someone as an investment.
This was all prophecized in the introduction to the One World Book Project. Surely, the author is a genius!
“When the world leaders met, there were many proposals made; each aiming to align various countries in favorable trade alliances, military protection pacts, and to balance regional or world power. There was to be no agreement on the terms. Finally, one delegate stood up and in a feeble voice read a poem, the lyrics to Imagine by John Lennon. Suddenly, the song made sense. Nobody was laughing. What if there only was one government; no trade, no money, no military competition? What if the world could use the astronomical resources that had for the past twenty years been committed to destruction and defense, and instead spend them on improving the quality of life; really helping people? That was the resolution made in the year 2020.”
http://rainbowpediatrics.net/book/c2.html
Yeah.... world peace and all that...... can’t we all just....... get along?
~sob~
I need a hug.
“imagine no possessions.”
Hmm. So why is Imagine copyrighted?
but, like, imagine there are no hugs, man.
“Imagine” is nothing more than the Hippy version of “The Internationale.”
“What kind of country is this where John Lennon gets six bullets in the chest, and Yoko is standing right next to him and not a single f’ing bullet? Explain that to me.” - Dennis Leary
No one ever realizes that not one sound came from The Piano. The music the fans heard was all in their heads, as they "Imagine"d what was being played.
Aahhhhh dude, don’t tell me that, I need a hug BAD!
I have always hated that song and the dopey little high-school drop out who wrote it.
“Kenny and George’s deepest wish is to imagine a world of peace, a world without violence.”
I bet George would like to imagine a world without public bathroom and DUI arrests.
_______________________________
Lennon was a hypocritical pos. I the seventies he bought 11 apartments in the Dakota while two miles uptown thousands and thousands lived in severe urban poverty and actual hunger. Never a word or a gesture from Lennon or Yoko toward or about the poor at their doorstep.
re: the comments above; pygmies pecking at a giant.
If it weren’t so silly it would be sad.
oh....I thought you meant "I blame Yoko."
yours is ok too, I guess...
John Lennon - Instant Karma got him.
Ever see The Killing Fields? They use the song at the end without irony.
Lennon was way out in lefty field long before Yoko ever came along. She just fueled the fire.
I started loathing that atheistic asswipe the instant he came out and said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. He could apologize and backpeddle all he wanted on it, it was all just words.
He did support Reagan at the end of his life though.
RIP
Well he did appear with him, by coincidence, at halftime during a Monday Night Football game, don't know if that exactly translated into Lennon supporting Reagan.
I would venture that Lennon knew it was all a spoof. He made a lot of friends that way. Other persons with his use of narcotics, would have been deported from the USA.
His fame and money got him a pass.
“Lennon’s magnum opus is an ode to atheism, communism, and the songwriter’s own ignorance of the forms of government, economic systems and faith traditions necessary to produce the peace and brotherhood the so-called smart Beatle dreamed of.”
Thank you for summarizing everything I ever thought about this otherwise drippy, dull, whiny (literally - nasal Lennon), lumbering song.
Why did Lennon leave his native England for the US?
“Imagine there’s no taxes....”
on balance, I still think this earth would have been a lot better off without him stinking up the place.
George Harrison was the only one of the four I could really stand. Starr, Lennon and McCartney were full of themselves, George was the only humble and grounded one in the bunch. Eventually Lennon’s weirdness even rubbed off on him.
I’m not talking about their personalities but their contributions to popular music which they improved considerably if you recall the sort of drivel being played on the radio before them. Lennon always had a BS detector and knew how much of what he said was so much drivel. There’s footage of him mocking the song Imagine at his home.
Reminds me of Mr. Rogers’s Land of Make Believe.
Drivel on the radio before him?
Oh please.
These guys are WAY overrated.
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