I have always thought that some of the lyrics were just impossible. "You Can't Do That."/"You're Gonna Lose That Girl."/"If I Fell in Love with You." I have ALWAYS thought, of those, "Oh, puh-leeze, John." (Because I always thought it had to be John writing those, since I couldn't attribute all that emotional tantrummery to that adorable Paul.)
But the other day as I listened I noticed that what qualifies a song for that list really branches into a lot of their music. A lot. What I mean is an attitude that views love as a commodity, a bargaining chip that can be withheld if it doesn't look like the exchange will be sufficiently advantageous. A detachment. "If I fell in love with you/would you promise to be true/and help me understand..." What happened to falling in love without seeing in advance if it's a good deal? "It's the second time I've caught you talking to him/And I have to tell you one more time I think it's a sin/I'm gonna let you down, and leave you flat/Because I told you before, you can't do that." I would put as many miles as I could between me and any boyfriend who treated me like that today. Or, "(I'll) give you all I've got to give/If it makes you love me, too/I may not have a lot to give/But what I've got, I'll give to you/I don't care too much for money/Money can't buy me love." So he says, but it's not how he begins. This is a guy who never seems to give himself to his girl--he holds himself back, standing on the edge of the pool of love, skimming the surface with his toe, writing songs about what would happen if he jumped.
Deep relationships? Michelle is about a girl he isn't able to talk to. Yesterday is about love gone wrong, and he wasn't even connected enough to know why. Day Tripper-- the title says it all.
Terrific, tuneful, songs--thoughtful songs. But not songs with a depth of heart and an ideal of love for a lifetime. It's a body of work dedicated to emotional detachment. A lot of interpersonal politics, mixed with a major dose of navel-gazing, it culminates in Imagine, a hymn to detachment, after taking a tour through the macabre, en route (the "Butcher" album cover, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and my personal least-favorite, Why Don't We Do It in the Road?)
I'm not writing this to gripe. They are what they are, and I've always sung along. Just a few years ago, Things We Said Today came on the muzak while I was trying on jeans, and I went straight out and bought the CD, convinced I could not go another day without it. I still love it.
But what happened to my generation? These songs were our emotional wallpaper. A friend of mine, decades ago, wrote a thesis about lying. She likened it to peeing in a swimming pool--it contaminates everybody's swimming experience. Lying degrades our ability to trust each other. In the same way, bad spelling, grammar, punctuation and syntax contaminate our language and dull the sharp edge of our ability to express ourselves.
I wonder to what extent my generation's ability to feel is dulled by the assumptions inherent in Beatles lyrics. It's not so much about what was said, as it is about the assumptions what was said had as a foundation. What struck me, as I listened to my CDs, was that I was like a goldfish seeing for the first time the water I'd been swimming in all my life. It's hard to see what has always surrounded you.
My generation fell in and out of love like any generation, got married left and right, but we seem to lack that gut-level grip on forever that commits to marriage. I was ambushed, the day before my foray into the Beatles, by a description in a 1912 novel:
There was a power in marriage, something apart from the law, or from religion, something apart from passion, love, or romance. (T)he unforgettable impress of one life upon the other...In some deep eternal sense, that which had once been joined could never be set asunder any more for ever.
Does anyone I know still think that way?!? When I married, did I?
I would have said I did, but I see now that my heart never did commit to my marriage. I held myself back, got married, and figured I'd add to the initial commitment incrementally, as it got safer. Of course, it never did. You can't build trust when neither partner is quite willing to be the first to jump in the pool. Marriage is a tie, and yes, it can be broken. But my point is that, lots of times, we never really made the kind of commitment that my 1912 novel described in the first place. I'm not blaming the Beatles, for as likely as not, they were just reporting on state of the water in the pool they, too, were swimming in.
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