Today, for the first time in a long time, I heard the song Imagine<\/i>, written and performed by John Lennon and inspired by Yoko Ono’s poetry. And once again I was struck by how wildly radical it is (in a good way).<\/p>\n
In a calm voice, to a very pleasant and catchy melody, Lennon essentially says that our three most sacred cows — religion, nationalism and private wealth — are destructive forces that we might think about abolishing.<\/p>\n
He doesn’t sound angry about it. He’s just inviting us to imagine a world in which people were free of three of the most powerful ways that humanity becomes divided into separate tribes.<\/p>\n
I can’t think of any other instance in which a revered popular figure sent such a radical idea out into the culture — and in such a clear and highly visible way. And yet somehow, by couching it in a calm and soothing presentation, he got that message out.<\/p>\n
By all accounts Imagine<\/i> is one of the most beloved and often performed songs in the world. More than half a century after its first release, it is the song that is played after great tragedies, to give people hope and help them pull together.<\/p>\n
Imagine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, for the first time in a long time, I heard the song Imagine, written and performed by John Lennon and inspired by Yoko Ono’s poetry. And once again I was struck by how wildly radical it is (in a good way). In a calm voice, to a very pleasant and catchy melody, Lennon essentially … Continue reading “Imagine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25149"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25150,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25149\/revisions\/25150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}