HOW WE ALL SHINE ON
I'm not going to Strawberry Fields tonight.

It's not like I don't care about John Lennon (actually, he's kind of my hero), or that I have other plans tonight (turns out I do, but I could break them and no one would freak out or anything), or even that it's the first snowfall today and the ground in Central Park will be cold and stuff.

It's mostly that, well -- he's dead. He won't be pissed if I don't go. One of the main things I took from his life was that anything is possible if you believe and work hard enough. Even world peace. Even a grubby English kid becoming a great rock and roller, in a time when such an animal was unheard of. Even walking away from your masterwork at the top of your game and going on to a whole nother life, which had to have been tiring (although less tiring than keeping a no-longer-relevant facade up, I'd guess).

John did what he had to do. He lived long, and hard, and everything he did, he did with maximum gusto. So people thought he was a freak. Big whoop. They laughed at Elvis, and Joan of Arc, and Galileo, and (yes) Jesus, and probably you too.

So instead of freezing my Canuck ass off in some park with a bunch of weepy point-missers, to mark 20 years after fate finally found John Lennon, instead I'm going to write a rock and roll song. Or try. With all my might.