Sunday, September 20, 2009

The meaning of Life

I should not be writing this down now as I am writing exams, but Diana jogged my memory. So here it is.

I grew up largely ignorant of popular music. It was pretty much in college that I discovered the rock and roll standards. I bought Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, soaking it all up my freshman year. I borrowed a tape of a late Beatles collection from a friend and listened to it late at night and I dreamed....

......I dreamed that The Beatles, or some of them at least, played a concert. Perhaps John wasn’t there, was he already dead? After the concert, when the audience was gone, I went backstage, and there was George, waiting for me. He took me out a back way to a sunny terraced garden, full of flowers, and he looked hard at me and told me the things I would need to know in life, the ways and secrets. I suddenly realized I was dreaming and I was horrified. What he was telling me was so very profound and important! I would forget it as soon as I woke up! I scrabbled around for a something to write with and scribbled down the meaning of life and the secrets to living it well with a stub of a pencil on a fragment of paper. George patiently repeated and waited while I wrote. When we were done I clutched the paper tightly in my hand, and awoke fingers gripped in a tight fist around nothing.

The secrets were lost.

3 comments:

marc aurel said...

How was it you grew up free of pop music? A friend at work grew up without ever seeing a movie. I think he is now more discriminating than the rest of us. Recently I listened to the complete songs of Ella Fitzgerald. They really had some awful songs in the thirties along with the great ones we still sing.

H said...

My family were all classical music fans. The house was full of music all the time. I played viola in more than one orchestra. My mother's grandfather had been a violin maker. I was not a terribly social kid, so I just wasn't exposed much. A little, yes. I knew some, but not much. I also grew up mostly without TV. We had one for a couple of years when I was small. My parents didn't like it, and gave it away.

oshweasel said...

damn!!! I need to know those secrets...