Imagining "Imagine" : John Lennon's gibberish-filled anthem.

Daily Standard ^ | Joel Engel

[Stone Mountain]

I'll agree and then submit that the Ideas challenged in Imagine have already won out and you simply have a man rehashing what we all figured out long ago. Not very "Edgy" is it?

Nope, not edgy. Like I said, that's why I don't understand someone who would take the time to write an article like the one above. Does he also deconstuct poems line by line forcing them to apply to the real world?

What Ideas challenged in Imagine have already won out? As far as I can tell, the main idea in "Imagine" was to imagine a utopian world. How does an idea like that win or lose?

[Hildy]

You don't have to like them, but if you know anything about music, you have to respect them. I was referring to the posters assertion that ALL BEETLE FANS ARE DERANGED.

[Taliesan]

I just can't imagine what music would be like without them.

[Taliesan]

Does he also deconstuct poems line by line forcing them to apply to the real world?

I'll just point out that liberals don't hold hands and recite "The Waste Land" with a dreamy, far-off look.

[johnb838]

I liked Instant Karma much, much better.

[Hildy]

Besides, WHY do we keep spelling "BEATLES" wrong!

[Skooz]

Pink Floyd revolutionized music - before them The Beetles revolutionized music - before them Elvis revolutionized music -

Yep. Floyd's "Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii" still seems ahead of it's time--30 years after it was recorded.

Robert Johnson is still better than almost anything out there today--almost 70 years after his last recording.

The truly great stuff is A) highly influential and B) timeless.

[CyberCowboy777]

We all know that the world of Imagine cannot exist as man currently exists. The Idea has lost.

The idea of Capitalism, Religion, Realist has however proved to work in reality.

I think the only reason to even talk about it is parallel to discussing the comment by Chamberlain (Peace in our Time - appeasement of Evil). It was shown to be short sighted and wrong - yet it is still used today as a valid concept.

You may not see Imagine as anything but a song of a dreamer - but you would be surprise at the number of people who build their life philosophies on such trivial works. The number of Communist Congressmen should validate this point nicely.

[CyberCowboy777]

Besides, WHY do we keep spelling "BEATLES" wrong!

I do that all the time - just a mental block!

[CyberCowboy777]

Absolutely on both counts.

I think rabid Beatles fans are mostly from that generation and have lost perspective of the last 100 years or so of music.

In reality I guess we could go back further, Handel and Mozart have left a bit of a mark.

[TASMANIANRED]

Imagine there's no brain cells
Easy if you try
Just sit around your apartment
And get massively high


Sir or Miss, My your rapier like wit never have need to sythe in my direction. This is much better than the origional.

[ZULU]

The Beetles were also responsible for a lot of the kind of leftist, mindless garbage we have to deal with today.

Turkeys like Lennon and his wife who posed naked for "art's sake" get knighted.

What drivel.

I don't care if they did write some good music. Their lifestyles and world views were incompatible with the kind of decent moral lifestyle once practised by MOST people in this once great nation.

And no, I'm NOT 90 years old. But I AM old enough to remember the flower children of the 60's and their venomous offspring.

[Hildy]

Boy, talk about holding a grudge!

[Skooz]

Their lifestyles and world views were incompatible with the kind of decent moral lifestyle once practised by MOST people in this once great nation.

As opposed to the to the moral purity of their cool-cat contemporaries?

[Zionist Conspirator]

What most bothers me about that disgusting new age paean is that it is internally contradictory. Its purpose is to inspire an idealism that seeks to put an end to idealism ("nothing to kill or die for"). How many have been inspired to kill or die to bring this about?

"We hope some day you'll join us" and do what? Create a world where there is no longer any "us" to join because all goals have been eliminated?

And just who are "we" and "us," anyway? David Rockefeller? Walter Cronkite (the owl of the Bohemian Grove)? Force X? Sauron? Le roi du monde???

My theory is that Lennon wrote the song to scare people into the John Birch Society. [jk]

[ZULU]

Will YOU listen to the Dixie Chicks, and watch Ed Asner on TV??

[Helms]

The next time you listen to "Imagine", try thinking of it as a sort of suicide note ( I don't mean this in a callous way but it actually sounds better as an eulogy in effect saying to all of us on this side,
that by joining him we can all live as one).

In that way I can make sense of what he is saying. Certainly where he is there is no country but for his sake there is a god.

[Zionist Conspirator]

No, its not hard for me to imagine no religion at all. I'm doing fine without it.

Of course, that means that you don't believe anything is absolutely right or wrong (good thing the subjective moral hang-up about murder is so wide-spread at present; makes G-d unnecessary for you, I suppose).

Or maybe you're depending on that "social contract" none of us can remember signing.

[ZULU]

Two wrongs don't make a right. Sinatra was a sinister low-life hood and his buddies were also a bunch of low-lifes.

I prefer entertainers like John Wayne, Jimmy Stuart, Gary Cooper, etc.

By funding low-lives, you contribute to their lifestyles and the destruction of our national moral fiber.

So, if you want to go out and watch Johnny Deppe, listen to Jayne Fonda exercise tapes, or buy Frank Sinatra records (he had a lousy voice in my book, anyway) go right ahead. Its your choice. But I will spend my money on positive role models - no matter how increasingly difficult it may be to find them.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Yes, I am agnostic. I do not believe in organized religion so its not too much of a stretch for me to imagine a religion-free world. But thats as far as it goes. I do not expect anyone to see things as I do nor do I care a fig if people want to worship whatever god they choose (or none) as long as they harm no one and don't try to shove it down my throat.

Now why are you going around setting up artificial barriers to other people's freedom? Why should their freedom magically stop when they want to shove it down your throat? There's no G-d (according to you) to make this objectively wrong. If objective right and wrong do not exist, then neither is it wrong to violate your "rights."

No wonder you so enjoy that song. Both of you are riddled with internal inconsistencies.