After an extended period of sadness, people are looking for the good times, and lo and behold along came Beatlemania to lift up the spirits of the Nation! Again, I was too young to remember the Ed Sullivan show or the whole early Beatles thing, but it seems to me that the Kennedy assassination and The Beatles function in my life in the same way that an astrological sign does for many. More than anyone else, the Beatles taught me how to live my life, and I have always felt that though there was probably no likelihood that I would ever even get a chance to meet them, that they were my friends.
And so it was that in my adult life another national tragedy and The Beatles would again collide in my psyche, this time shaking my foundations in a most disturbing way...
It was about twelve-thirty in the morning on September 12th, 2001. I was laying on the sofa, as I had been doing all night, distraught, bleary-eyed, watching the TV coverage. I was trying to convince myself to go to bed, but it didn't matter. Sleep? What for? The phone rang...
"Oh shit! Oh my God, what now?"
It was a good friend of mine. He lives in New York City, and I had forgotten about him. I didn't realize that he worked in a building right next to the World Trade Center. He more or less witnessed the whole event. He felt the first collision, evacuated his office building, saw the second plane hit. The collapses. He was one of those people we all saw on TV, running for their lives away from that horrific scene toward a future they would never have imagined. He lost friends, drinking buddies who were FDNY, in those building collapses. His building was not damaged, and he had to return to work, so he would see that giant wound in the soul of his country EVERY DAY. And it changed him, without question. Though he claims he was starting to lean that way anyway, soon after 9-11 he definitely was staunch right-wing. Over time he managed to quit drinking heavily, started going to church, and plays a great game of golf. It works for him now, but it was a long, winding road.
Many of my liberal friends wonder how I could tolerate that change in him. We had a few small political arguments, usually just via email, but early on I made it clear I just wanted to remain friends, not argue politics, so that's how it went generally, but above all I can really understand where he's coming from--because it almost happened to me...
In times of trauma, things from your past can be a great comfort. Naturally I turned to Music for strength, and my old friends The Beatles, but something very disturbing happened. I found it hard to enjoy their music, and had an especially hard time with their excellent 1968 double album called "The Beatles", or "The White Album". On a long car trip I recall once listening to the White Album, track-by-track in order, including "Revolution 9" entirely in my head, and now it was a problem. 1968 was a turbulent year, and the White Album for many seemed to be a kind of soundtrack to the collapse of the sixties (and in fact this was also the early days of the collapse of The Beatles themselves) just as Sgt. Pepper had been dubbed some kind of Summer Of Love soundtrack. There were all the "Paul is dead" clues. The Manson Family murders. The album had some dark, sometimes violent imagery that had been more or less absent from their music up to that point. I know now it was the state of shock I was in at the time that made me draw fear-based conclusions. I was not religious, but I knew enough about end-times theories and the Book Of Revelations for this to fuck me up.
I started thinking that the attack on the country was one of those signs of the Apocalypse. Very disturbing stuff as it is, but when you add in an event such as this that seems to fit into it like a tee, the juices start flowing. The Beatles problem made me very uncomfortable. What was going on there? It occurred to me that maybe The Beatles represented the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Nowadays I chalk it up to just not knowing enough about the Bible, because I've never heard anybody else say that about them, but at the time, the head trip I was in made it seem plausible. Maybe those dumb crackers who burned their Beatles records in the sixties were right. What a horrible, wretched feeling to realize that your heroes, your old friends, were not at all what you thought they were, and that you had been deceived all along. Looking at the stark cover of the White Album I noticed an anagram of the word "beatles"--le beast. Fuck, am I doomed? How could this be? I started thinking maybe the terrorists are right, that America IS the "Great Satan". All sorts of paranoia and grieving. Conspiracy theories. The whole nine yards.
A few days after the attack my wife and I were driving down the highway with our year and a half old son. We saw a bunch of cars pulled over on the side and people standing there looking at something up in the sky. We pulled over when we saw what it was. We got out and looked too. It was the most vivid, intensely colored rainbow I've ever seen. The prevailing winds blow Northeast from New York City right up our way, and I knew immediately that this rainbow was so beautiful because of the prismatic effect of the air being full of smoke particulates, toxic chemicals and Fear fuming out of the destruction. I looked at my baby son and wondered "What have I done, bringing this poor child into this insane world?" Would this be his Zodiac? In those days I would drive around during the day on my job listening to the news reports with a rock-hard lump in my throat, quietly weeping. I grieved for all the loss and Fear this was causing my people, but also perhaps selfishly for myself and the personal predicament I faced regarding my friends The Beatles. How could I envision the darkness of life that would ensue as the repercussions of the attacks unfolded without having the solace and good feelings of their music? Was it possible? How bad would the future be? What was my fate? It was a creepy, surreal feeling, full of deep anguish.
Such a negative reaction to a rainbow! At the time I didn't get the beauty-out-of-death-and- destruction point I was supposed to be gleaning. My frenzied imagination was running amok. When your mind is blown, there is no guarantee it will be pulled back together, and if it is, no guarantee it will be in the same order as before. Eventually, as the country settled down the state of shock subsided and I was able to talk myself out of this lapse of Faith in my heroes. A month and a half later George Harrison passed away, and I was okay with it, though sad that 9-11 was the last World event of the many momentous ones he witnessed. Of course I knew that over all, the Beatles message was Love and Peace and Friendship.
This could be the basis of a novel... At the time, I downplayed 911. Of course, it was tragic that many people lost their lives or were injured, but in my cynicism, I thought, is this really a Pearl Harbor or is a publicity scheme by the then Bush administration to start a war? I suppose it did effect the collective consciousness of this country.... I was was born during the Cuban Missile Crisis. How has that shaped my life?
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