A Day In The Life

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's death.  This post is dedicated to him, so it will be about the amazing song he and Paul McCartney wrote, A Day In The Life.



This Beatles song has always caught my attention.  Within the song, there are essentially two different songs forming a dichotomy within itself.  The verses about the news, obviously starting with, "I read the news today, oh boy," were written by Lennon about news paper articles.  The other song within A Day In The Life, written by McCartney, is a little more light-hearted, starts, "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head."  But why combine these two completely different songs?

As I've listened to this song, many times may I add, I see McCartney's part as the precursor to the beginning of the song.  In Paul's part it says; "Found my way downstairs" and then a few lines later says "found my way upstairs".  It doesn't say he went to these places, but rather he found his way.  By saying "found" it makes me think that this character is just wandering around through his day.  He doesn't seem to have an exact purpose.  The last line of McCartney's 'song' says "I went into a dream".  He isn't really fully in the present, rather off in some other place.  And all of this is the set-up for Lennon's part (even though it comes later in the song).

Lennon's part also suggests this character is not in the present moment as he states; "He didn't notice that the lights had changed".  This person was not paying attention to what he was doing.  Driving wasn't top of mind, clearly.  By saying that he didn't notice rather than just he crashed, shows how his mind was elsewhere.  Then the song goes; "They'd seen his face before, nobody was really sure".  Again, this alludes to the character's wandering through life because he was recognized, but no one could put a name to his face.  If you are wandering through life, you are there, but are missing things that pass you by along the way.  He had missed all the people.  The face was recognizable, but he wasn't really remembered.

Though these two songs were written separately, I think they actually tie together quite nicely, and turned out to be one great song.

John Lennon

October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980

We're not in Kansas anymore.

In class we have been discussing whether or not civil liberties should be abridged in perilous times.  A discussion has started a few times of how much power or say the president has in different situations.  This actually reminds me of the movie Independence Day and The Wizard of Oz.  Who knew they could connect?  Here is a short dialogue from Independence Day.

President Thomas Whitmore:  Mr. Levinson, you're mistaken.  There is no Area 51.  There is no spaceship.
Albert Nimzicki: Uh... Mr. President.  That's not entirely accurate.

As you can see, the president had no idea of what was actually going on.  It makes me wonder how much the president actually knows.  How much does the CIA tell him?  Not everything. How many people in the government know more than he does?  Probably a lot.  It seems like the president could just be a facade for the government.

Well then there is where The Wizard of Oz ties in.  The wizard says; "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

If the president is the Wizard of Oz, who is the man behind the curtain?