I’ve always had a strange obsession with the John Lennon song “Imagine.” For those of you America-hating morons who dismiss John Lennon as a socialist, you may as well stop reading now. I can’t say anything to you that you haven’t already dismissed with arguments about how the real world ostensibly works and how anyone who sees flaws in the culture of late capitalism is too naïve to succeed. I look forward to your letters. (Side note — yes, I’ve heard the Rush Limbaugh “Imagine there’s no liberals” interpretation. It was irreverent, hilarious and not unenjoyable to listen to.)
Let’s take a necessarily abstract look at how the music of “Imagine” contributes to the overall effect of the song. One of the direct lyrical ancestors of “Imagine” was a Yoko Ono poem (I know), which reads in its delicious entirety, “Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them into.” This is relevant because the evocative image that a Rolling Stone critic came up with to describe the way the piano chords flow under Lennon’s ethereal voice is “pillowy” — a description suggesting the softness and lightness of clouds.
The serenity in the vocal melody allows us to float away, above the chord-clouds, into the atmosphere. While we’re up there, words of peace and comfort dance around us with the sunlight in semidazzling patterns of shifting color.
What words they are! It’s admittedly easy to dismiss “Imagine” as overly hippie-ish and totally unrealistic poetry — except, let’s not. I love what Ringo said about the lyrics in response to the outcry calling them socialist propaganda: “[John] said ‘imagine,’ that’s all. Just imagine it.”
Dig a hole in the garden of your minds to let the clouds drip into. Let the ideas — peace, a brotherhood of man — germinate there, and they will put down roots.
That’s the point of “Imagine,” and really, of John Lennon’s whole philosophy.
We can’t change the world, but we can change ourselves.
When one of us consciously decides to stop hating others — to stop looking for the bad in everyone and instead look past it — everyone around them benefits. In an imperceptible and indescribable way, they do benefit. Every time someone on the street smiles at me instead of walking past with his or her eyes averted, I leave that moment brighter on the inside. For a second, I almost forget the horrors of the world.
Because the world is horrific.
Every day there is senseless murder, greed to the point of avarice, misunderstanding to the point of hatred. Why?
We commit atomic violences against ourselves and others constantly because success is getting ahead. Being ahead necessarily implies that someone is behind you.
Success is winning. To win you have to beat someone. So, we convince ourselves that to be happy and comfortable someday, it’s OK to inflict pain today.
If we don’t like what we see in the mirror, we attack the smallest weaknesses in ourselves until they disappear, whimpering. If we see weakness in others, we pick at it until the scab comes off and they bleed. We laugh and move on, satisfied that they are weak and we are strong.
And someday, because of our strength, we say, we’ll be rich. We’ll be powerful and successful. We’ll have everything we want.
But, if everything we want is money, will we ever be rich enough? If everything we want is power, will we ever have enough control? If everything we want is strength, will we ever be able to push the mountains out of the way?
I’m poor. I’m powerless. I’m weak.
And yet, things really aren’t that bad.
I can laugh. I can sing. I can smile.
Why should I engage in destruction just so I can “succeed?”
You may say that I’m a dreamer — that I’m a socialist, left-leaning, naïve idiot with no concept of reality — but I’m not the only one.
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the wo-o-o-orld will live as one.
Dallin Kelson is an English senior at UF. His column runs on Mondays. You can contact him
