I have a terrible visceral reaction when anyone I know posts that song on Facebook. I feel sorry for a couple of people who have done that because I set off a veritable fire storm with my comment.

AMDG

It's too bad about "Imagine" because the tune is actually quite nice (maybe I'm wrong -- that's a non Beatles fan saying that). If those vapid lyrics had been wed to a less memorable melody the song probably would never have gotten the legs that it did.

I wouldn't say anything to most people, but only from people who should know better--like people who comment here. None of y'all have ever done it, though. One was a middle-aged priest who has been a friend since he was a 19 year old college student and the other was a daughter who should know better. ;-)

AMDG

It would probably be painful, as much to some of of the teachers as to the students.

I read the "Flossie" stuff to my wife and she suggested that the teacher should have followed that with "And we hate Flossie, don't we?"

I think people like the ones you mention, Janet, are, to what would be their chagrin if anyone pointed this out to them, a lot like the Christian admirers of Ayn Rand: they hear the parts that appeal to them, and the stuff that contradicts their other beliefs just somehow doesn't register.

Today is International Beer Day. Wouldn't want y'all to miss it.

AMDG

Oh dear. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it. But then again, it might make your day more penitential, so I guess it's good.

AMDG

"When I was at school we had a music teacher who wore crumpled linen suits and had affairs with the sixth formers and Imagine was his favourite ever song."

There were two Beatlemaniacs teaching music in my elementary school. One of them, now about 68 years of age, is employed as a 'management consultant' and living in Los Angeles; supposedly he had been CIO at the local phone company prior to that. I suppose that's all to the good; he was wretched as a teacher, even in a subject as unserious as elementary school music. (It would never have occured to me he'd have any worthwhile occupation; looking him up was an education).

The other was a contemporary of the first and continued teaching. He was less hippie and more fruit-loop (appearing for work in leotards). Yes, he was banging other teachers at the school. He was on marriage #4 the last I heard (and that was a while ago).

My comment was in reply to your first one, Art. Re your second, the guy who became a CIO: I have a lot of similar stories about where one-time hippies ended up (not that you said he was a hippie, but it sort of fits--Beatlemaniac, now 68 years old).

I've no reason to believe he ever lived on a commune. It was his general disposition and grooming (long hair, beard, &c), at a time when most elementary school teachers were rather prim and well into middle age or younger women derived from and at home in a suburban milieu (class of '69, married a Jaycee who sells real estate).

I just signed onto my much-neglected blog for the first time this week and found that the post that got the most hits this week was one titled Imagine which if you have read it you will know has nothing to do with John Lennon's version. ;-)

Still, I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

AMDG

I'm sure that's what it was.

AMDG

As to Imagine, I've never understood the attraction: it's musically cheesy and lyrically idiotic. But I'm curious what remark of Janet's could set off a fire storm.

That book actually looks interesting, though it's not something I'd want to invest precious reading time in. I've always been quite sure (well, at least since I was older than 21 or so) that the pre-sexual-revolution world was not the grim pleasure-less wasteland that the revolutionaries made it out to be.

"about empowerment"?!? I'm willing to bet that was written by a woman. Some of these feminist-y women writing about sex say the strangest things about it--strange from the male point of view, at least. It's like a weird caricature of the old dichotomy where men just want to do it and women want it to have all this significance.

By the way, Paul, I meant to reply to your comments about Walker Percy in another thread: I actually agree that Percy's treatment of sex is off-putting, though maybe not in exactly the same way that you do. In particular, his novels after Love in the Ruins often have crude sexual stuff here and there which strike me as very inappropriate (using that word in its natural sense). It's not that they're excessively graphic, or pornographic, but they just seem out of place. And in general I'm inclined to think that you just can't write very explicitly about sex in a way that's aesthetically effective. At any rate I can't recall ever seeing it done.

"Imagine" is perhaps the best example in music of Satan being able to appear as an angel of light.

I like Flossie!

One of the downsides of complaining about it for me is that I end up with it stuck in my head. "...perhaps the best example..." Yeah, I guess you're right.

"sex should be about nutrition"

There is that old joke about a man turning into a pizza afterwards. :)

I don't want "no Lennon," but "Imagine no totalitarian materialists" doesn't fit the tune very well.

Percy did have a lot to say about the role of sex in human fallen-ness, so that was part of it. But the specific way he went about saying it at some points in the novels didn't work, imo. Lost in the Cosmos, especially the last section, is more effective.

Then there's the story about Lennon doing his accounts and moaning about his expenses - his accountant commented, "imagine there's no money, John!" His response: "It's only a bl***y song."

(Hearing which actually made me think better of the man: anyone who declines to take Imagine even remotely seriously is OK in my book, even if they committed the crime of writing it in the first place.)

Point. It's generally only the performers and those driven to make it big who actually got far enough to be taken as gurus. Although that's changing now - it's increasingly possible to go viral and become an internet celebrity without being a top-level performer, just a normal human being. (Constant exposure to the internet may disqualify you from being a "normal human being" by the standards of any society other than our own but that's another matter.)

If I ever find time and a work ethic, and get tired of having friends and being acceptable in polite society, I'm going to write a comic about a society which takes "Imagine" as its blueprint; mostly because I loathe the song but also because I want an excuse to use the term "lennonite reëducation camp".

Ssomeone has written one line from Imagine every 1/2 kim on a prominent way marker for the last 10 km into Santiago

They dont give you that plenal indulgence for nothing

!!

Ha!

Bono totally deserved that.

There's something about Bono that kind of makes you want to make fun of him.

I think he's still sincere, but I also think he has a tendency to pomposity. Preaching by a rich show-biz star just isn't all that well-received, generally. I remember a reviewer of one of their relatively early albums--I think it was that live album from the late '80s or so--making fun of some of Bono's pronouncements, and remarking "Face it, guys: you're a successful arena-rock band, not Vatican II."