Artist Carnival: Happy Belated Birthday

Was talking with a friend about a plot idea where people are put into a virual world as the Beatle of their choice as a forn of psycotherapy. Recently was George Harrison's birthday and maybe my Beatle of choice to be. The next typical thing would be to mention how old he would be, if he was still alive. Honestly though that's not really important. People don't listen to his music and dwell on the history; they listen and allow themselves to be transported back into time. Personal history resists being dated and tries to stay timeless in our own minds

Aging baby-boomer are seeing their world slip into history. Once a generation that sang -I hope I die before I get old, is now planning to hang on until the bitter end. It is disheartening -not that I planned to see a whole generation burnout in a spectacular blaze of glory. Youthful rhetoric can be allowed an extra measure of bombast and hyperbole. Maybe my angst could be best illustrated by a party I went to. The party goers there were once young idealists, now older and totally obsessed with their 401.k accounts and pension plans.

"It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there ever is now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can only hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one." -George Harrison

For a long time I never could get into George Harrison's music. In 1970 the triple album All Things Must Pass was out and My Sweet Lord was the single on the radio. Still the music didn't make much of an impression. It was a time when Krishnas started mobbing the airports and shopping malls, Jesus Freaks roamed the streets and new religious cults sprang up like mushrooms after a cosmic rain.

The fallout from that wave of faith was already apparent. As the old joke went "once I was all messed up on drugs, now I'm all messed up on the Lord".

In 1976 George Harrison was sued for plagiarism because My Sweet Lord was so similar to Ronnie Mack's song He's So Fine, a hit song for The Chiffons in 1963. George Harrison claimed the plagiarism was subconscious and not intentional. The verdict against Harrison had big repercussions in the music industry as a flood of similar suits were filed -some with more merit than others. A couple of years later John Lennon settled out of court because the owners of Chuck Berry's music claimed the song Come Together illegally borrowed from the song Maybelline.

It was several years later before My Sweet Lord had any meaning in my life. I was going see a college friend in Philadelphia. His name was Kumar but it got commonly mispronounced as Q-mars and eventually got shorten to Q.

Q was originally from Iran and studied in America on a student visa. With about two semesters left before graduation the Iran - Iraq War had reached its bloodiest low point and Q was sent his draft notice. When he refused to go back a death warrant was issued. The following six months was a frantic effort to get him a green card. And you know it didn't come easy because the State Department was still angry about the Islam Revolution and the embassy hostages.

Think of it as luck, fate or the divine hand of providence but Q was spared. To celebrate his green card and new life in America we going have dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. Before dinner I was going to stop at a bar off of the corner of Chestnut and Second. They had a special where you would get free drinks on your birthday. It wasn't my birthday but I had a fake ID that said it was. I was almost thirty years old and this was the only time I ever used a fake ID in a bar.

It was late in the afternoon and the commuter train into Philadelphia was near empty. In my rail car there were three or four people going in to work for the second shift, myself and three young women singing together. Their voices were beautiful.

We struck up a conversation, it was playful and flirtatious. I knew they had other plans but I told them it was my birthday and I'd gladly buy them all a drink. They almost said yes, or maybe they were just nice and let me enjoy the fantasy. As a birthday gift before we reached the city they sang for me, one of the songs was My Sweet Lord.

Sometime, probably a year or two later, I was thinking back on that day. It was like light switch turning on -but within that moment George Harrison's music suddenly made sense to me.

"I think people who truly can live a life in music are telling the world, "You can have my love, you can have my smiles. Forget the bad parts, you don't need them. Just take the music, the goodness, because it's the very best, and it's the part I give to you most willingly." -George Harrison

Well Happy Belated Birthday George.

I'm sure as my fellow baby-boomers are beginning to look over the cliff and think about the big mystery and also look back -and think about our experiences. We are in the here and now -but now exists in the context of a past and a future.

Thank you for your gifts to us.