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.
Ringo's charisma made him a popular performer before he joined the Beatles. Lennon said Ringo was the only one of the four he was absolutely sure would have been a success had he not met the others. Perhaps he was just being modest and sticking up for Ringo but it was an interesting comment.
Lennon typlified the utter hypocrisy of these brainless rock stars. Not all of them are brainless however, as proven by Alice Cooper. To paraphrase him, “if you look to these moron rock stars for direction in who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron yourself”. Cooper, incidently, has always been able to seriously rock, and his band back in the early 70’s were GREAT!
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