Imagine being an awkward teenager

This song is the oldest one known to me on the playlist. “Imagine” entered my consciousness shortly after The Beatles in 1999. The soundtrack to my freshman year of high school was The Beatles. The first one that I discovered John Lennon, followed by George Harrison (who has a song on this playlist), with little attention paid to Paul McCartney (my least favorite Beatle), and none to Ringo Starr.

John Lennon was an asshole. Given the context of my life and exposure to classic rock and a desire to be a teenage radical punk, if only as an act of teenage rebellion, I gravitated toward him first for that reason. John Lennon’s tragic assassination also lent him a morbid appeal, as at that time the world was mourning 20 years of his untimely death. The album I’m most familiar with is of course the iconic “Imagine.” The song “Crippled Inside” also spoke to me and still touches a nerve as indeed:

“you can shine your shoes and wear a suit / you can come your hair and look quite cute / but one thing you can’t hide / is when you’re crippled inside.”

At that point in my life I felt crippled inside. When I began high school, I had survived two of the worst school years of my life from a social-emotional perspective. My life felt in upheaval with no constants, other than an emerging identity as a troubled youth and possible loner. I wore black, had few friends, and spent much time online. Adding to that factor was that my mentor had committed suicide on August 5, 1999. It was a time of despair and John Lennon’s caustic lyrics and arrogance were important. Even on the song “Imagine” he has a sort of sneer, yet the song is used for peace marches and protests, as an anthem for healing (it would be in heavy rotation following September 11th).

This song’s overt religiousness has always been lost on me, even as I type this. The specific message has been about having peace via the communist revolution. While most likely that is the imposition of 2016 values, the communism certainly did speak to me with perhaps only an exaggerated, contemporary importance. Politics had entered my consciousness, through this song and the other classic rock music that I was sponging into my existence.

At the beginning of high school, I was reinventing myself consciously with music. I have always been a navel gazer. Up to that point, music had been in popular culture, from my sister, and somewhat from my parents. My identity was being tied to music and continues to do so. The freshman year and The Beatles and John Lennon do invoke a more simple time in my life that I feel very disconnected from at this point. Despite periodic revivals, despite the tradition of “White Album Januarys” (where I revisit their catalog but focusing on that album specifically), The Beatles remain a part of my past and childhood that no longer resonates. The Beatles defined my life for two years, and even with my expansion to their solo careers (John and George would be explored in college, c.2005), they no longer tug at my heart strings.

The journals from that era as well as other artifacts speak more to the significance of The Beatles than I can today. The band almost seems irrelevant on a personal level. In sum, the inclusion of the song “Imagine” for its religious aspect has been based more on cultural value and interpretation, as it has always been secondary to my personal experience. The song “Crippled Inside” speaks more to me on religious themes as does his album with Plastic Ono band in the 1970s. John Lennon’s politics also stuck out to me, and that is certainly the focus and lens of 2016, the year of a pivotal presidential election.

The Beatles may have been bigger than Jesus, and certainly they were that way for me from 1999–2001 even if that no longer resonates. The Beatles live on in popular culture, as they do in my memory, but that is what they are, a memory. I’ll remember more on religion later.