30/11/2001 - 7:52 p.m.

All Things Must Pass

This is my first time to myself since six AM when I woke up and heard obscure Beatles songs on the radio and thought "what happened?" It's been a truly awful day. I didn't want to have to go to school and face all the stupids who don't understand. People who think that Brittany Spears and the Backstreet Boys are the best things to happen to music. People who don't know who the Beatles are, and who don't care.

How come the world hasn't stopped? Why aren't we discussing this in every class? They don't care because they don't know. In September, I at least had the sense not to say things to the tune of "Oh, some guy died, he was in some fucked up band nobody gives a shit about." Or Kassie in my English class all cut up and angry in Setpember, but today: "So somebody died, get over it."

This is so much bigger than that. It's about music, about the history of music as we know it- this is another day the music dies (and Madonna didn't say that, Don McLean did!). Music as it is today- music videos, tracking, sound effects, all of the things that happen in a recording studio are thanks to the Beatles. Music changed forever when George Harrison picked up a sitar and started to play "Norwegian Wood". If nothing else, these affected little teenagers owe their music to that man.

I don't know what to feel. I was born into a world without John Lennon, and I've managed to take that very well, and well, obviously life will go on. Right now, I can barely think. I can't find anything to say to mean anything. The radio in my mind plays All Things Must Pass, and I listen, and try to believe, to use that instead of my own dead thoughts. Those say very little more than giant question marks and exclamation points.

More than anything else, I'm saddened by the lack of acknowledgement by so many people. If they don't know now, they never will. How can you live under such a rock that you don't know who John Lennon is, or George Harrison, or Paul McCartney, or Ringo Starr? These are bloody famous names. They're more famous than The Doors, they're more famous that The Dead, they're more famous than The Stones, they're more famous than Elvis, they're more famous than any of the excrement on the Billboard Charts today.

It's been Paul McCartney I've truly felt sorry for: his mother, his wife, and now George lost to cancer. It must be so devastating to see the world you know fall apart around you because of this singular horrible thing.

I've felt so alternately sick and faint today, I'm so glad it's a weekend. I'm so glad it's not December.

Thank you for the music George.

I don't cry because you are gone, I cry because you must not be forgotten.