I think it’s fair to say that the single most profound influence on my life, both directly and indirectly, has been John Lennon. From his music, to his art, to his unflinching exploration of his relationship with Yoko Ono, and his working class attitude toward life, politics, drugs and spirit, John Lennon, however unlikely a candidate, shaped the person I am today unlike anything else.

When I was ten my older sister’s boyfriend turned me on to punk rock. JFA, Dead Kennedy’s, Circle Jerks, the Ramone’s, Rabbid Rabbit, Agent Orange… all the greats. The energy, edge, and anarchistic attitude of punk rock shook me to my core and ignited my own strange orgone with a voltage that would not, from that point on, take much umbrage in suburban ideals. I took a hard left at that point, so hard I damaged my tires alignment for the rest of my life.

But where punk rock fired up my synapses for individualistic expression I was never fully nurtured on that promise until 2 years later I was turned onto the Beatles and most specifically the work and life of John Lennon. From that point on John Lennon would become the tensile point from which I would discover eastern religion, psychedelic drugs, magick, audio recording, anarchist and leftist politics, and, most importantly, the unparralleled power of music.

Also from Lennon I learned how to be curious and curious with a passion. Rarely stopping for too long at any point of exploration, I would indulge deeply, seriously, and then furiously turn my back against whatever point of exploration when I found the bottom of the pool. I learned from him a means to life as art and, in my summation, that means is a very disciplined egalitarian curiosity coupled and balanced with a ferocious loyalty not to that point of exploration but to exploration itself.

But perhaps the most positive and proud effect John Lennon has had on my life is in his public approach to his relationship with Yoko Ono. As a 13 year old discovering sexuality at the same time I was discovering John Lennon I received a gift that has paid dividends up to this day as I’m sure it will well into the future. I found myself, from the earliest stirrings of my longing for a mate, to want a partner that would be more than the traditional models of wife that I was so surrounded by. And while I saw that there was no dishonor in a woman serving a man and vice versa I saw that that model of compatibility was flawed in that it saw any act that a man would do for his woman as serving. In John and Yoko I saw two people who became one, who no more served one another than a hand serves an arm. I longed for a mate who would be a friend, a passionate lover, a challenge to my ideas, a supporter of my efforts, and a child in the face of a viscious world. I expected a woman who could be gentle and smart and defined enough to leave herself behind in service of our union. This is what I saw in the public image of John and Yoko and this is what I sought out.

And I am thrilled on this and just about every (good) day of my life to realize that I have found that companion in my wife.

When I sit and think about it I still cannot rectify a world that would first be able to create the circumstances that would become John Lennon and then in the same breath create the circumstances that would allow Mark David Chapman to shoot him down in cold blood. And while it tears me to pieces to think that this kind of mongoloid ardour could come to pass, there is also a kind of poetic rhythm and working class discomfort that seemed to have first forged John Lennon, and then, finally, allowed for the means of his death. In there somewhere is an expression of the great duality of the world John Lennon did some much to help me love. And in there, also, is a watershed moment on the in-folding of Western Civility that I believe has yet to be fully realized.

Happy Birthday John Lennon and thanks for all the chuckles…