John Lennon, remembered

Feet of clay, head in the stars

ETA: Speaking of feet (not to mention brains) of clay, today is the anniversary of Lennon's birth, not of his death. Consider me suitably embarassed.

I can only infer where I was when I first heard John Lennon was shot: at home, listening to something on CBC Radio.

I was shocked, I was saddened. Lennon was to me first and foremost not just a (former) Beatle, but the political Beatle. I wouldn't have braved the glare of the check-out woman at the drug-store to buy my first issue of Playboy magazine; between my adolescent embarrassment about sex and my nascent feminist consciousness, it was an excrutiating moment.

But the interview itself (now miraculously online here) was well-worth any amount of embarrassment. Who doesn't want to learn that one of the closest things one has to a hero is intelligent, thoughtful and (best of all) has come through fire to find happiness?

At least, that's how I remember it; I don't expect I'll be reading what's posted at the link above, or pulling out my ragged, coverless copy of the original magazine to confirm those impressions any time soon. When you're older than your hero was when he was murdered, there seems little point in re-living those last days of his life.

My Beatle's dead: click here for a naked buttocks and one of the best songs ever written.