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.