The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

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Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 23:03:49 -0500
From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: John Lennon's Legacy

John Lennon's Legacy

Jon Wiener
<http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=146264>

On the anniversary of John Lennon's murder (Dec. 8,
1980), I've been thinking about his famous argument with
Gloria Emerson in December, 1969 -- filmed by the BBC,
and included in the recent documentary The U.S. vs. John
Lennon.

Emerson was a celebrated war correspondent for the New
York Times who had just returned from the bloody
battlefields of Vietnam; Lennon had just written "Give
Peace a Chance" after he and Yoko declared their
honeymoon a "bed-in for peace"--they had stayed in bed
for a week, "in protest against all the violence in the
world."

Emerson told him in her haughty upper class voice,
"You've made yourself ridiculous!"

"I don't care," Lennon replied, "if it saves lives."

"My dear boy," she said, "you're living in a nether-
nether land. . . . You don't think you've saved a single
life!"

"You tell me what they were singing at the Moratorium,"
Lennon shot back -- he was referring to the biggest
anti-war demonstration in American history, which had
been held in Washington DC a month earlier.

Emerson wasn't sure what he was talking about: "Which
one?"

"The recent big one," Lennon explained. "They were
singing "Give peace a chance."

"A song of yours, probably."

"Well, yes, and it was written specifically for them."

"So they sang one of your songs," she said with some
irritation. "Is that all you can say?"

Now he was angry. "They were singing a happy-go-lucky
song, which happens to be one I wrote. I'm glad they
sang it. And when I get there, I'll sing it with them."

The film presents the exchange as an example of the
mainstream media's relentless hostility to Lennon's
peace activism, and celebrates his put-down of Emerson.
But 37 years later, it's worth reconsidering Emerson's
question: did "Give Peace a Chance" save a single life?
Did the anti-war protest of 1969, or any other year,
save any lives?

Of course the Vietnam war didn't end in 1969, even
though Nixon had been elected the previous year after
declaring he had a secret plan for peace. The Paris
Peace Talks were already underway, but the American war
didn't end for another four years -- during which 20,000
Americans were killed, along with more than half a
million Vietnamese and Cambodians.

You might ask Gloria Emerson's question about the anti-
war demonstrations on the eve of the Iraq war, in New
York, Los Angeles, London, Rome, and elsewhere. They
were the biggest anti-war demonstrations in world
history, but Bush invaded Iraq the next month anyway,
and as of Dec. 8, 3,000 Americans have been killed
there, and perhaps 650,000 Iraqis, according to the
Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet. Did those
demonstrations in 2003 save a single life?

Maybe not, or at least not yet. Stopping a war takes a
long time. But apathy in the face of an unjust war is
simply unacceptable. As Rebecca Solnit argues in Hope in
the Dark, you have to keep trying to win people over,
because you can never be sure the forces of darkness
will triumph, and because the most impossible things
sometimes happen.

Lennon did come to the US, and eagerly embraced the
steady work of anti-war persuasion and organizing. "Our
job now is to tell them there still is hope," Lennon
said at an anti-war rally in Michigan in 1971. "We must
get them excited about what we can do again." It was
hard to see it in 1969, but eventually the US did end
its war in Vietnam. And today the people who were
singing "Give Peace a Chance" in 1969 can be glad they
sang it.

_____________________________________________

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disappearing.act.one

When I was young and even now I wanted to disappear and still do, I
thought I'd wander through the world and still think I'll wander through
the world, invisible to one and all, and I'd see what everyone was doing
and I still see what everyone is doing and I thought no one could see me
and I thought no one could catch me and I still think no one can see me
and I still think no one could catch me and I hid from death and I still
hide from death, and I was scared of death and I'm still scared of death,
and I thought if I made sound death will stay away and death stayed away
and I still think if I make sound death will stay away and death still
stays away http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIs593pieac


===

please check youtube & nikuko.blogspot.com thank you from time to time

The Edge

Go to the edge of the world. Don't come back until you find it. Don't tell
me there's no edge. If you think there's no edge you're not at the edge of
the world. Are you. When you reach the edge of the world you have only one
way to go. You may think you have another way to do but you only have one
way to go and that is away from the edge of the world. You may go to the
edge and you may look over the edge. You may see the shell of the world or
the beams of the world. You may see the nodes of the world and the vectors
of the world. You cannot go beyond the edge of the world. You may think
the edge of the world is quiet and smooth. It is not. The edge of the
world repulses the world. The edge of the world repulses the world trying
to go beyond the edge of the world. The world cannot go beyond the edge of
the world. If you cannot go beyond the world at the edge of the world
you're at the edge of the world. You may dance at the edge of the world
and you may look. You may look just a little beyond the edge of the world.
You may look at the sky. The sky is part of the edge of the world. If you
look at the sky and you cannot touch the sky you are at the edge of the
world.

The edge of the world is not a barrier and not a frontier. There are no
guards at the edge of the worlds. There are no tariffs and no customs.
There is nothing at the edge of the world but the edge of the world. The
edge of the world is nothing and separates you from nothing. You may think
to yourself someone owns the rest of the world. Or someone owns the edge
of the world. Someone may own up to the edge of the world. Someone may own
the edge of the edge of the world. No one can own the edge of the edge
beyond the edge of the world. The edge of the edge beyond the edge of the
world is an open set. The world up to the edge of the world includes the
edge of the world. The edge of the world is a closed set. You may think
you are free but you are in a closed set. You may dance within the closed
set and you will be thrown back at the edge of the world. For the edge of
the world is an active edge and a prohibition. The prohibition at the edge
of the world is within the world.

Every dance is a dance at the edge of the world. Every dance weakens the
world. The world is weaker for dance. Dance is stronger for the world.

You may think you are at the edge of the world. Then return from the edge
of the world. You may think there's no edge of the world. Then you're not
at the edge of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS5-v9yrGPY Bones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht9rjkaFpqg Blocked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6f56M3B1DM Dropping
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bAnuua9-Pc Xcape

*There is a site bed on the edge. It is not an edge at all.
** There is no end to the open set of the other of the edge of the world.
*** There is no beginning as well.