Connecting The Olive Branches

First:
I'm pleased to begin by making what I for one consider an important announcement: I'm currently at work on a new video, which will be a very brief excerpt from my new comedy scene, just posted a few days ago at archive.org, "Larry Houdini and Napoleon Escape".

Next:
Though I'm well aware that the point made by this following videoclip fails at being self-apparently valid, I feel that Letterman is falling way behind in his competition with Conan to make inside-references to me/my material, therefore I shall go ahead and credit them this one, though it be at personal expense to my own credibility among the "uninitiated" (as if I ever had credibility/credit with that group to begin with):



Third:
I'm continually getting the feeling that people who write articles at HuffingtonPost.com are reading my blogs, not just because of content but also because of timing. For example, a day or so following my blog wherein I state that Conan and Dave should go cold turkey on their need to ridicule anyone who uses pot, General McCafferty wrote a blog at Huffington Post where the title referred to an addiction to imprisoning people for "drug" use. By the way, I felt compelled to post a Comment to that article, as I think it's time someone started screaming about how certain commonly used phrasing ("substance abuse", "drug abuse", etc.) lumps the heroin addict together with the casual user of pot. It essentially generates a prejudice, inciting/promoting/sustaining/encouraging/suggesting, etc. a mindset against casual users of pot that is totally disconnected from reality.

Fourth:
I once sent to Paul McCartney for his birthday the following drawing (now contained within my collection of graphic artwork book, "Go Eyes, Go!"):

This birthday gift led to the opening line on the opening song of his "Flaming Pie" music CD, "The Song We Were Singing":

"For a while, we could sit, smoke a pipe,
And discuss all the vast intricacies of life"

By presenting the idea of sitting, smoking a pipe, and reflecting on things with another person, McCartney is clearly and deliberately taking the concept of smoking a pipe and playing on the different connotation pot brings to it, contrasted with what sitting and smoking a pipe meant in an earlier time. Because we are familiar with the context McCartney brings. My drawing, with its title, does the identical thing with a pipe, it plays on the once traditional connotation of pipe smoking as something an older person does, involving tobacco and reflection, contrasted with what pipe smoking means in the context The Beatles and/or Lennon brings. It also makes a larger point about the different context of our lives from those who lived before our time, and the need for redefinition this brings. We both make the point with the identical "prop" and in an essentially identical manner. Thus, as with many things McCartney brings to the world, this is something I brought to McCartney.

I bring it up today because President Obama seemed trapped by outmoded mentality when he had the cop and Gates come together for a beer. And now people having a beer together is burned into the idea of a dignified way to iron out what might from the outside appear to be racial tension. I therefore draw special attention today to the opening line of Paul McCartney's "Flaming Pie" music CD. Maybe those who sit together and pass around a pipe emanate a greater aura of dignity to a moment of coming together. Some will see things as I do.

Honk If You See A Clown's Nose

So I'm driving on the freeway this afternoon, or this morning, it was right around noon, and there's this guy driving next to me on my left. He looks almost exactly like Paul McCartney, only obviously he isn't because he has white hair. But as I am someone who plays a major role in Paul McCartney's artistic life, for the sake of the history of humanity I decide I should try to be more sure. I reposition my car in relation to him, so that now he is driving next to me on my right, and he still looks like Paul McCartney. So I decide there's only one way to be certain, I'll drive in front of him and look at him through my rear view mirror, as no one can fake this acid test. Before I can do this, however, the traffic gets bad and each lane is moving in fits and starts. I had considered previously driving behind him for quite a substantial distance to see if he was driving from L.A. to Liverpool, that would cinch it. But hey, if Paul McCartney wants to lose me he'll lose me, and if he wants to not lose me he won't lose me, irrespective of traffic. What do my steering wheel and gas pedal really have to do with it, considering the real options available to a billionaire? And then my lane of traffic (it's now been ten minutes since the last time the McCartney look-alike was anywhere near me) comes to a near-complete stop. It turns out, a van driven by a guy with clown makeup and a clown nose on had a completely flat tire, yet he was inching along just the same. And behind the van, inching along with blinkers flashing, a car also being driven by a guy with clown makeup and a clown nose on. Hey, you don't need clowns with flat tires, I can take a hint - unless.... well, it's pointless to conjecture when the possibilities are endless.

This reminded me of the time in 1983 when I was sitting next to a guy dressed up like Sherlock Holmes in London's Baker Street Underground Station. McCartney was across the platform, the rest of the station being nearly empty (it was May 13th, approximately 11pm, and I'm sure everyone who was there will verify everything I've reported here). The next day (still 1983) Nat Greenberg, an old friend of an old family friend (Phil Gordis, who plays Mr. Kelbman in my Dostoyevsky video), invited me to a dinner party (Nat used to live next door to McCartney in St. John's Wood). I had only been in London for a few days, had never been there before. After the dinner party (two weeks later), Nat said I could crash at an unoccupied house in St. John's Wood he was going to sell.

As for Baker Street, besides being known for a song I was an influence on, entitled "Baker Street" (which includes the line on which I was not an influence, "he's the rolling stone"), it is also commonly associated with Sherlock Holmes. Furthermore, shortly after the McCartney-and-Steinhoff-in-Baker-Street-Station moment, McCartney released the movie, "Give My Regards To Broad Street," where the bad guys are Rathbone Industries, actor Basil Rathbone being another name commonly associated with Sherlock Holmes (the shot introducing McCartney in "Broad Street" came from my 1978 video, "How Did The Future Learn To Play Monopoly," which I had left with film producer Sean Daniel, a friend of McCartney's and the first person from whom I had learned of CalArts, the school I attended).

So the main thing is, today is Mick Jagger's birthday: Happy birthday, Mick Jagger! (I think he's a Rolling Stone)

I almost forgot, it appears from something Seth Rogen said on Conan on Friday, 7/24 that his people also followed me, several weeks ago.

Feet And The Ground

Before presenting this solid proof that I know what I'm talking about all the time make no mistake, I shall first beg your indulgence and clarify something from my previous blog.

In my previous blog, wherein I refer to specific things on Letterman and Conan regarding alcohol use, I expressed my belief that these TV shows did things apropos of what I had stated earlier that day in a comment (on Huffington Post in response to an article) about excessive targeting of pot use when alcohol use can just as easily be targeted. I believe this kind of targeting has less to do with the effect of pot on people and more to do with alcohol being legal, so therefore talk show hosts tended towards letting that fact make their choice for them regarding whose mind functionality to ridicule. However, I did not mean to say that alcohol use is never a target, nor that every time it is this is therefore being done apropos of something I stated. I was very specific about the very specific context that led to this specific assessment in this specific instance.

I might also add that, while it is generally understood that alcohol use can mean the consumption of a dignified glass of wine with dinner, and not necessarily drinking a bottle of whiskey five times a day causing one to be drunk on one's ear, the correlation in terms of pot seems strangely absent. Pot use is only represented as causing people to be stoned out of their minds, with no balanced mind functionality and no entitlement to dignity while under the influence, unlike those who use alcohol in moderation. Until this changes, I must condemn such blatant prejudice and the dangerous, massive disrespect of and interference against all of the legitimate people doing important things that it propagates. Is it just ignorance of the relatively benign aspects of pot use, or a tendency to offer up a random group of people for everyone to beat up on (perhaps without physical violence, but beat up just the same), tapping into the suppressed malicious bile of neurotics passing themselves off as the embodiment of sanity? And portraying themselves as society's voices of morality?

Letterman and Conan, you are of course terrific, I know you can cold turkey on this urge to ridicule pot use, and when it's over, and you're just targeting Republicans and right-wing Democrats as you should, you'll see it was worth it, and you'll have me to thank, but you'll never acknowledge my contributions outright, will you? No, never. Well anyway, the following videoclip, which makes reference to the 7/23/09 Conan in relation to my 1993 "Mall Man" video, pretty much speaks for itself (may I add that it should be seen in the context that for over a month now I've been pointing out that I recently seem to have some kind of a place influencing late night television, more than I usually do, at least):

Follow, You Idiot

Much that is worth saying in this world requires a substantial amount of context/backstory in order to appreciate the important reason why it is even being said. And yet it seems as if the Twittering-Away-The-World society we're moving towards generates the idea that anything that fails to produce an immediately positive, instant reaction, anything that needs to call forth a non-self-apparent context, isn't worth anyone's time. We who inhabit non-self-apparent contexts should recognize the increasing need to stand our non-self-apparent ground. Knowing that I exist in a world where corruption and convolutions are fed by evil, stupidity, and just plain lack of wisdom, I find myself apprehensive that the last word on so much might ultimately be allowed to be nothing more than a "twitter".

What brought all this on? The simple fact that, once again, for the millionth time, I must insist that before my words are judged, a few things must be carefully put together to appreciate a point I wish to make, and that it will seem only too easy to justify that I am asking too much. Well, here I come, ready or not.

In a number of my more recent blogs, I've demonstrated that I've been an influence on Conan O'Brien's "Tonight Show" and on David Letterman's "Late Show". My proof has been particularly manifest to those who are intelligent, and also particularly manifest to those who have witnessed the dates of publication of my blogs in relation to things that followed. As I've expressed before, this blog site makes a poor witness, considering that one can tamper with the date of publication - that is, unless one reads the blog on the day it appears, then you know when I said what. When I've fallen short of being able to provide proof of my influence (many things are done by us and happen to us that we will never be able to prove in an absolute way), I've asked that the credit to which I am entitled be applied. Credit from those times when proof is in fact provided, even beyond when my blogs did or did not appear, the proof residing elsewhere. I ask that my as yet unproven assertions be nevertheless considered without the taint of cynicism, that this is something to which I personally am entitled.

It is because of there being such recent interest in me by Letterman and O'Brien that I wonder about several things that happened last night on these shows in relation to myself:



And now I direct you to a Comment I made (as JonathanDS) to an article posted on Huffingtonpost.com (on July 21st at 12:16pm, prior to the taping of either show), the article being entitled, "Smoking The Green Shoots" (after you're done, I have a yet another comment or two):I draw attention to this because Dave and Conan are among the first people I think of when I wonder why it so often happens that alcohol use escapes being the target of cliches. Again and again, we are asked to applaud the assumption that the minds of people who prefer pot to alcohol are to be disrespected. Nevertheless, the audiences of Dave and Conan are not exclusively comprised of people so unanimous in their opinion of pot, so we often see a fence-sitting act - but rarely is it suggested on these shows that the minds of those who occasionally touch alcohol are necessarily suspect. It happens, but far more often, when pot or alcohol are interchangeable for the choice made by these talk show hosts as to who to ridicule, that those who like a glass of wine get to maintain their respectability, and those who would instead choose a joint.... lose.

Because of the particularly recent inside-references to me/my material on these shows, I seriously consider it possible that I might have made a difference, at least momentarily, with regard to the moments shown in the videoclip.

So: now let's all take the two hours we millions spend watching these shows every night, millions and millions of hours when put together, and use that collective time and energy (waning, sleepy energy, but I'm not picky) to build a, to build a.... I'm going to need a moment, I'll have to get back to you on this. I know there's got to be an untapped resource waiting for me around here somewhere, God knows the world is waiting for it.

One Small Stepbrother For Man

Overcome by the guilt that can only come from being a major influence here and there on Will Ferrell yet not seeing his movies until they come to premium cable channels and even then sometimes not seeing them immediately (this does not include movies that involve Stuart Cornfeld and Will Ferrell, I will always go see Cornfeld movies as soon as they come out in theatres), this time around I saw a Will Ferrell movie on the first day it appeared on a premium cable channel. I refer to "Step Brothers," which was made available for viewing on Starz On Demand Early Premieres today for the first time.

I will not write a movie review, however, I do feel compelled to say that I consider this movie to be truly original for the particular brand of absurdity in its premise, the specific unreality that permeates its characters and what they are capable of. I also see that it is highly unlikely that this movie will ever really be recognized for its originality, but will instead always be the target of tired, cliched criticism by those among us who are presumed adult and serious. Some will feel generous to grant that it is an "anything goes" slapstick comedy, however, I see significant creativity beneath the unreality, not unlike the way I believe the scifi "Twilight Zone" premises illuminate more truthful, insightful revelations regarding human emotions and the soul than do the so-called real premise upon which serious Chuck Norris-type characters dwell.

In this movie Will Ferrell continues his tradition of frequently being influenced by me in a big way. Back when I saw his small part in the first Austin Powers movie ("Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," 1997), Will Ferrell's character performed an action I perceived as being based on my 1978 video, "How Did The Future Learn To Play Monopoly".

In my 1978 video, set in a relatively primitive future, a prisoner is brought before the king, refusing to divulge how to play Monopoly. The king has a whole Monopoly game, and the prisoner is the only remaining man alive who knows how to play Monopoly. Yet as if having learned a lesson from Prometheus, the Greek mythological character who gave fire to man, the prisoner will not be responsible for corrupting the human race. Alright, I was making a metaphorical statement about the very seed of capitalism. However, the prisoner's great feeling of repugnance at the thought of bringing knowledge of Monopoly back into the world did not necessarily represent my personal views on economic systems. I wanted to show how the seed of something that can be pervasively superimposed over everyone's life can exist in such sheep-like clothing - unless one sees my choice of Monopoly as random, the prisoner character's extreme feelings towards it totally absurd. My video obviously suggests a backstory to his aversion, yet leaves you to guess about it. And now back to the story: Next, everyone around the king begins to chant, like children who know the power of acting as one, "We wanna play Monopoly! We wanna play Monopoly! We wanna play Monopoly!" The prisoner finally cannot stand it, blurting out that if they will just stop torturing him with their chanting in this way he will give in and teach them how to play Monopoly. And so he does.

In the 1997 "Austin Powers" movie, Ferrell's scene is similar, where the childish, repetitious chanting of something humorously produces the effect of forcing a character's desired capitulation. One might also note that the premise of "Austin Powers" involves an individual who is something of a singular remnant of a bygone era, or at least the only one who hasn't moved beyond it, and is at one with ways that others are now outsiders to, despite there having once been a time when many were a part of the grooviness. This gives Powers much in common with the only remaining survivor from among all who knew the secret of how to play Monopoly. To be totally convinced of my influence on the Ferrell character in that movie, you might also need to be familiar with how often people such as Mike Myers et al are influenced by me.

And so, when years and years later Ferrell made his YouTube surprise hit videos with the very, very little girl Pearl, "Landlord" and "Good Cop, Bad Cop," wherein the ability of a small child to be ultra-insistent and unyielding (childish, to be precise) pitted against an adult prove far too powerful for the adult to be able to hold his ground, I was already on that page with regard to Will Ferrell. In fact, "Good Cop, Bad Cop" even has the Ferrell character divulging his great secret to the very, very little girl, Pearl (she interrogates a murder confession out of him). This would have reminded me of "How Did The Future Learn To Play Monopoly" even if Ferrell in "Austin Powers" had not.

This thing about children encapsulates much of what "Step Brothers" is about, the power of childishness to dominate adult situations in so big a way, something one could liken to David and Goliath, in that one seemingly powerful is actually no match against one who appears comparatively weak. This idea is more specifically focused on when we see the schoolchildren are able to so completely overcome the two adult stepbrothers.

The filmmakers seem to share my perception that the stepbrothers in relation to the schoolchildren epitomizes something at the core of the movie, for the final scene of the movie is their return match, offering the moviegoer a way to crystalize on the growth of the stepbrothers - absurdist growth, of course.

Water Is My Friend

A brand new thought has occurred to me, and like many of my brand new thoughts, it might actually have been 42 years in the making, five seconds here, two seconds there, it all adds up to real time spent. Sort of like only thinking about pancakes once a week, because that's how often you have them. Yes, I am going to attempt the impossible: a hypothesis about the Beatles song, "I Am The Walrus".

First, matters of comparatively lesser importance (come to think of it, if my upcoming hypothesis has any validity, there are few matters in the world with greater importance - this may be an exaggeration prompted by a momentary enthusiasm).

Matter of lesser importances number one: my DVR crashed, which means, I saw neither Letterman nor Conan on Friday, July 17th, as my plan had been to watch them on DVR after they aired. Those who have been following my blogs might consider this a matter of potential significance - I cannot say, as I haven't seen the shows I missed(!). I will point out that something that occurred on the Thursday, July 16th Conan related to what I blogged on July 15th, 4am in relation to Conan: I blogged the idea that there is danger in sports if a ball comes at you with great velocity (in the instance I cited, danger to Conan's sidekick, Andy Richter). And so on the July 16th Conan, Venus Williams hit a tennis ball "to" Conan, Conan garbed in a catcher's mask and talking about the danger he was in from the ball coming at him at a great velocity. The following night, July 17th.... I don't know what happened on Conan, or Letterman.

My DVR has since been replaced by AT&T (all recorded shows gone), though who knows what might have made it happen in the first place? I use the word "might", and thankfully no one likes hypotheticals, and so therefore I can leave behind the "whole thing" now that the DVR has been replaced.

Next, I finally got around to seeing the Will Ferrell movie, "Semi-Pro". I've often been an influence on what Will Ferrell does (including the night of his farewell from SNL), and this movie is no exception. I will let this videoclip speak for itself (enabled to do so by all the printed words I've worked into it):



Well, it almost speaks for itself. I should add that, while the student film "Limbo" referred to in this videoclip was a film class project, wherein 15 or so people made various contributions in various ways, the scene shown here was by me, guided by the basic plot of the pre-written story our class used, but mine nevertheless.

This next videoclip regards the now-cancelled TV show, "Dirty Sexy Money," the last few previously un-aired episodes of which are now being shown on ABC. This TV show, like many other show biz product, has in the past made inside-references to my work. The thing of particular interest is that (the late) Bill Clayburgh, the father of one of its stars, Academy Award winning actress Jill Clayburgh, was my next-door neighbor in New York City during most of the '80s and early '90s, and appears in my Dostoyevsky video. In presenting this videoclip, I also offer you not one link but a second link as well to videoclips showing other times when this TV show made inside-references to my Dostoyevsky. So now the latest (though originally intended for airing around Thanksgiving 2008, apparently):



And now on to The Beatles. Specifically, as promised, I offer my hypothesis about the Beatles (Lennon basically) song, "I Am The Walrus". To do so, I feel I must first attempt to dispel the notion that if Lennon himself says the words to the song are all nonsense, therefore it's all nonsense. I use as my example to illustrate this another Lennon claim that one should take with more than one grain of salt. With regard to his album, "Double Fantasy", Lennon on the one hand explained that album title as being in connection with a planned follow-up album to be titled, "A Heart Play" - from a fantasy to a play. The strict meaning of the words "Double Fantasy" are about two people and fantasy, fantasy being a word one associates with an act of the imagination. Two people are on the cover, John and Yoko, pretending (as in "fantasy"), to be unassociated individuals waiting for a traffic light, and then suddenly kissing (by the way, in 1974 a close friend of Lennon, Howard Smith, once suggested to me that in New York City I could just start up a relationship with a woman while standing next to her waiting for a traffic light. Howard was amazingly gregarious). Yet Lennon also claimed that the album was named after a flower (when translated) called, "Double Fantasy". I dispute this - not the existence of such a flower name, but that this explanation provides the entire meaning of the album name. No doubt the flower name first put the idea in his head. However, I argue that if someone with the last name of Smith gives their son the first and middle names of George Washington, and then someone named Jones does the same thing, but claims their son was named after George Washington Smith, Mr. Jones would certainly have to accept that, as far as everyone is concerned, he can say this all he wants, just the same George Washington Jones has been named after George Washington, period, and if he didn't see this happening as the consequence, well, he had to see this happening as the consequence.

Lennon could not possibly have been oblivious to what he was communicating, in terms of the non-flower aspect to the sound of the name, "Double Fantasy". When he said otherwise to an interviewer, I'm sure he had his reasons, but the final truth of the matter must certainly be different.

Perhaps he wished to bring to the table the idea that an artist's private concept regarding what is behind his own decisions for his work, or what are perceived as his private concept, does not necessarily become the prevailing concept. I furthermore believe this to be the kind of larger statement Lennon enjoyed making, and if I took the time could find many ways to prove this point about Lennon. A Beatle gets used to doing things that require another to take it from there.

As a songwriter Lennon was something of a poet as well, and a poet should not always be held responsible, after the creation of a work, for knowing exactly what prompted what. McCartney said on Letterman just the other night that other people know his history better than he. There are times when another person is in a better position than ourselves to document our actions. I would not want to be my own spokesman if I had just had a fifth of whiskey (in truth I do not drink at all, a glass of wine a year perhaps).

And thus ends my attempt at dispelling the idea that Lennon and only Lennon should have the last word on whether "Walrus" was all nonsense.

"I Am The Walrus" includes, among other things, options about identity. There is both the idea of being someone with the identity of a cog in the corporate wheel, and becoming the target of reproaches from a twisted corporate mentality for not fitting in. There is the idea that an Edgar Allen Poe also becomes a target. There are those who become faceless through their identity, eggmen and policemen and penguins. This song is an example of how an artist might be influenced by a subject he already touched on in song: "Paperback Writer," created shortly before "Walrus," also discusses the idea of finding an identity/position in the world (just as the line in the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers," "Once there was a way to get back home," is not unlike the dominant subject of the song, "Get Back," both created during the same general period).

My 1965 story, "Endless Voyage," described in my previous blog and elsewhere, and which I contend led to a number of Beatle songs (including "Paperback Writer") and began my lifelong importance in relation to the individual members of The Beatles, ends with the underwater civilization building a monument to the first underwater people. It is as tall as the Empire State Building, which was the tallest building in the world at the time I wrote it. However, because the monument has its foundation beneath the sea, it only rises a few feet above the water. In "I Am The Walrus," Lennon writes, "semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower". No one before this song had ever heard of "semolina pilchard", however, semolina is a pudding, and pilchard is a type of sardine (usually fed to cats). So you have sardines, i.e., underwater animals, climbing the Eiffel Tower, an architectural structure often thought of as being part of the same special, very small category as the Empire State Building. Furthermore, "Endless Voyage", by being about sending half the human race to live underwater as the solution to overpopulation, is not so far from the colloquial use of the word "sardine" to denote people when they're being crammed together. Additionally, walruses and penguins are also sea creatures. If my contention about the handful or so of other Beatles songs is correct, that they built upon material in my story, "Endless Voyage," it would greatly increase the likelihood that a Beatles song with various sea creatures also followed suit.

Initially I had understood that part of the reason behind Lennon's "Walrus" was "The Walrus And The Carpenter" from "Through The Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll, where the walrus eats the babies. A poet putting the word "egg" so near to the word "walrus" may actually have been, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by Carroll's writing, among other things. Yet are we willing to hypothesize that Lennon would write a song influenced by words from an author? Lennon never dictated that we think this, and that fact will always be "all she wrote" for any number of people. I think Lennon might also have had a special willingness to offer support, under certain circumstances, for those in situations requiring them to swim against the tide.

If I Had A Nickel For Every Grain Of Sand In The Universe

Before I make with the videoclip that will present to you how I believe I was a part of last night's talk show activities, including Paul McCartney's Letterman appearance, I will first say a few things thru the medium of writing (I'm hoping that somehow the writing that appears in the videoclip will be seen as part of a separate medium entirely).

The "Statement of Blog Purpose" that accompanies my blogs refers to a story I wrote in 1965, "Endless Voyage", and how it led to the Beatle songs "Eleanor Rigby", "Yellow Submarine" and "Paperback Writer". I have omitted from that statement other Beatle songs that it also led to, because it would sound far-fetched - I joke, not about where the Beatle songs came from, but about the idea that the line between what everyone regards as far-fetched-sounding and what sounds ordinary generally places me on the ordinary-sounding side. Yet even within the realm of the far-fetched-sounding there are distinctions, between far-fetched-sounding, very far-fetched-sounding, very, very far-fetched-sounding - I think you can grasp this point. My frequent contentions that things created and done by The Beatles and the ex-members The Beatles, when not carefully scrutinized on a serious basis, including an extensive review of the evidence, obviously give a whole new meaning to the concept of "far-fetched".

"Endless Voyage" has much in common with the idea, "You can't go home again". In a nutshell (I provide the word "nutshell" much like one pokes little breathing holes in a pet hamster box - when you have finished with your innovation on the word "nutshell" I shall continue. Oh yes, I hear you laughing. Please, enjoy yourself! You're thinking: only a nut would - but I digress), "Endless Voyage" is about a future world where over-population leads the powers that be to consider options regarding what to do with all the people, deciding where they all belong. A pill is developed, making it possible for a person to breathe underwater, but once one takes the pill, one can never breathe air again ("you can't go home again"). So half the human race is to live underwater, the other half above-water. A separation into two peoples results, those who breathe water and cannot breathe air, and those who breathe air and cannot breathe water.

At the time I wrote this story, it was a class assignment to write only a two-page story, to be based on a photograph one selected from among a group of photographs. My 15 pages created a stir, as if an endless amount of pages had been written, especially considering that all I had was a photograph. (I understand that nowadays it is considered far less unusual for a ten-year old to immerse themselves thusly.)

Other Beatle songs that resulted: "Rain" (flipside of the single release, "Paperback Writer", wherein the first-person singular speaks of rain as if his orientation is fundamentally alien to the listener), "Get Back", "Golden Slumbers", "Octopus' Garden". There may be others, I'll have to think about it. Let me get back to you, I've been very busy.