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theriverspath · 6 months ago

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Ineffable May, Day 28: Bureaucracy

Rated Teen for non-graphic spicy tension. Inspired by this delightful bit of fanart by @bea-n-art.

Mr. Brown landed in a heap, cracking his shoulder on the coldest, dampest floor he’d ever encountered. Somewhere, behind the pain and terror of the last several seconds, he thought that if any floor needed a carpet it was this one.

“Name?” There was a bored voice above him. It came from behind the rickety metal office desk that loomed over his prone form. It took a moment, but he was able to prop himself up into a sitting position. The room around him was as dank as the floor. A lone fluorescent bulb above provided sickly, flickering light. Dirty water dripped down filthy, windowless walls. Was that a poster advising the reader not to lick them? He shuddered at the thought.

“Where am I?” Mr. Brown grabbed onto the edge of the desk and hauled himself up to standing. His shoulder protested, and he grimaced.

“Where do you think? You see any pearly gates? Your dear old grandma floating around on a silver cloud, playing a harp?” The figure seated at the desk had distinguished graying hair swept back from his face. He wore a dusty black jacket, and was flanked by messily stacked boxes of documents. He gestured to their surroundings, indicating the lack of clouds of any color. Mr. Brown wondered what his grandmother had to do with anything. He’d just gone to visit her last weekend, and she seemed to be in the peak of health.

“Now, if you would be so kind. Name.” The man picked up a clipboard, apparently preparing to write Mr. Brown's moniker on the paper attached to it. He brought up the tip of a sharpened pencil and opened his mouth to lick it. A forked tongue longer than anything Mr. Brown had ever seen on another human flicked out and twirled around the wood and graphite. He almost couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. It was grotesque, and yet … there was a flutter of something in Mr. Brown’s belly. It wasn’t revulsion.

The unearthly tongue slipped back into the man’s mouth. His only acknowledgment of Mr. Brown’s stunned expression was to raise his eyebrows in a “you getting the picture now?” movement. Mr. Brown swallowed. Hard. The room titled around him. He swayed forward, catching himself on the lip of the desk.

“I’m in Hell, aren’t I?”

“Ding ding, give the man a prize!” The fiendish office worker smirked. “Oh wait, there aren’t any prizes here. It being Hell and all.” Mr. Brown barely heard the words. His thoughts were spinning. How did he end up here? His confusion must have shown, because the smirk faded from the man’s - no, he must be a devil? demon? - face.

“Look, it can come as a bit of a shock to some. You die, and suddenly you find out that the books just didn't balance in your favor. But, we can’t do anything about it now, can we? So, if you’ll give me your name, we’ll have you sorted and sent on to your eternal reward that much quicker.”

“But, I’m not dead!” Mr. Brown sputtered. He struggled to remember how he had gotten here. The last few hours were a bit fuzzy. He ticked off the events of the evening on his fingers. “I was at a meeting, in Mr. Fell’s bookshop. But there was dancing, I think? Which I thought was highly unconducive to discussing this year’s Christmas light display, let me tell you. Some vandals threw a brick through the window. Mr. Fell and his friend tried to talk to them. But there really is no reasoning with hooligans, so I offered to call the proper authorities. And then…” Mr. Brown faltered. After that there were only flashes of memory. Had he flown through the air? Been tossed down a stairwell? Surely not.

“Did you just say bookshop?” The demon stood up, the force of it sliding his chair. Mr. Brown took a step back. The flash of dark emotion from the other man - demon, whatever - made his breath quicken. Was it fear? Not quite… Oh, wait, he hadn’t answered.

“Er, yes? Do you know it?” Mr. Brown cringed inside. What a ridiculous question. Why would a resident of the underworld know about a bookshop in London?

“Oh, yes. I’m quite familiar with it. Tell me,” The demon leaned forward over the desk. Mr. Brown felt himself wanting to match the motion, to close the gap between them. What was going on? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so affected by someone else’s mere proximity.

“Was Mr. Fell’s friend,” that word was sneered, “a tall bloke? Red hair? Dark glasses? Moves like he forgot to install his bones?” The strange turn of phrase about bones aside, that was an accurate description of Mr. Fell’s dance partner. Mr. Brown nodded, utterly at a loss as to how the demon would know that.

“Ugh, Shax! You didn’t tell me there would be humans there!” There was a thump of a fist on the abandoned clipboard, then a finger pointed at Mr. Brown. “And you say you’re not dead?” Before he could answer, the demon rounded the desk. He caught Mr. Brown’s forearm in one hand and pressed two fingers to the inside of his wrist. The grip was firm, but not rough, and it sent a ripple of shivers up Mr. Brown’s arm. He felt his heart skip a beat.

“There’s a pulse, alright. You’re alive.” All the frustrated bluster seemed to leave the demon. He sighed and released the arm. Mr. Brown could still feel a tingle where fingers had touched his skin. “What am I supposed to do with you? There aren’t exactly forms for this sort of situation. I can’t intake living humans.” The demon’s eyes roamed Mr. Brown’s face, as if he would find the answer to his question there. This close, Mr. Brown could see that they were a striking shade of blue. The memory of that long, forked tongue flashed across his mind. He tried to stop it, but his body knew exactly what it wanted this infernal stranger to do with him.

The demon must have picked up on the subtle change in Mr. Brown’s stance. Or, maybe his pupils had dilated? Whatever it was, it surprised him. Eyebrows were raised again, this time accompanied by a bit of a smile.

“Well, whoever you are, it looks like you’re going to be here for a while. At least until we can locate the proper paperwork to have you sent back topside, anyway. In the meantime, perhaps there’s something I can do to make you more...” The demon took a step forward. Mr. Brown didn’t back away. The smile widened. “Comfortable?”

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#ineffable may #ineffable may 2024 #furfur good omens #furfur #mr. brown #furcarpet #good omens #good omens fanfic #good omens fanfiction #ficlet #inspired by fanart #my writing #rated teen

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thecoleopterawithana · 5 years ago

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Love your blog! I was wondering if you’ve read Paul’s PR guy’s diaries? They are full of little gems, such as how Paul uses smileys and is very handy with his iPhone. I read this entry and the guy writes Paul lost “a soulmate and songwriter”. I think it’s quite telling that the people he works with call John his soulmate. Haven’t read all the guy’s entries yet but just wanted to mention this one; it’s the entry about the Freshen Up tour in Japan 2018.

Hey there! I’m so incredibly sorry for taking so long to reply, but life has been truly hectic!

To answer your question, I hadn’t had the chance to go through Stuart Bell’s accounts of the Japanese leg of the Freshen Up Tour (2018), so I’m grateful you’ve brought this to my attention! He certainly offers a different insight into the inner workings of the tour and how a more than experienced Paul navigates the commotion still with youthful enthusiasm. Even if written with a bit of a “PR hat on”, an amassing of ‘insider’ POVs (from people who were actually there) is invaluable to getting the full picture of Paul McCartney. And as someone who is filled with love every time a new facet is revealed, I appreciate any piece of information that comes my way!

So I have to agree with you that little anecdotes like these are hidden gems:

The devotion and adoration is incredible and as Paul’s car rolls by this afternoon, the faithful are rewarded as Paul winds down the window and waves. He is so touched, and awed, by the reception that he even shoots some footage as he rolls past the fans. (Later in the week I receive a text from Paul while I am out for a run and it contains the clip. It looks mega so I ask if I can post to his social media – shortly afterwards I receive a smile face. A little-known fact about Paul – he is the master of emojis when text messaging!

— Wednesday 31st October – Tokyo Dome, For Whom The Bell Tells: Japan 2018.

And then, we have this other entry, that I agree is rather interesting: not only does it give us an ‘insider’s perspective on John’s significance in Paul’s life, but the piece centres on the issue of art as a platform with the power to spread a message, social responsibility, and how the message is something one’s passionate about (Paul being described as “not shying away from wearing his heart on his sleeve” just tickles me):

It barely needs mentioning that music is a huge and central part of Paul’s life but he has never been detached from the wider world. Like many musicians, matters of the heart are a preoccupation in his song-writing but Paul has continued to express his thoughts on life, the world in general and the causes close to his heart through his songs, interviews and other interventions. You can look back to the controversy surrounding his debut single with Wings, 'Give Ireland Back To The Irish’ (a response to the “Bloody Sunday” killings only a few weeks earlier in 1972), as an example of how he does not shy away from wearing his heart on his sleeve. Paul is passionate about many things and his humanity is self-evident. For a man who lost a soulmate and song-writing partner, you can imagine how the horrors of gun violence are an issue close to his heart. Just days ago the world was sickened by the mass shooting in a synagogue in Pittsburgh and so Paul has been keen to make his views known by not only showing his disgust at the attack which left 11 dead but also calling on the US to do the right thing by using their votes in the upcoming election to elect politicians who will do something about it. As I’m on my way to the venue Paul calls me and asks us to release a message in response to the terrible events. He gives me a quote over the phone and in a rather surreal moment as we chat, I find myself looking out of the car window to see giant posters of Paul across the city with huge welcome messages for him.

—Thursday 1st November – Tokyo Dome, For Whom The Bell Tells: Japan 2018.

But let’s address the bit about his relationship with John.

Like you, I find very telling the choice of words used here. It just goes to show how themselves and everyone around them have to scramble for a term that adequately describes the ineffability of their connection. It felt so encompassing, that the terms that regularly pop up hold that indescribable aspect in themselves: special, magical, cosmic soulmates. And seeing them struggle to put it into words is one of my favourite things! It’s no surprise then that I have an inordinate amount of overlapping tags covering the numerous nuances of this very same feeling, tracking their various attempts at capturing it.

But for me, it’s even more fascinating to look beyond the external awe-inducing aspect of it – this special, magical, cosmic glow that draws us to the relationship in the first place – and see how this notion felt to them; how it impacted the relationship in the first place.

Let’s look from Paul’s perspective first, as it is here, by a matter of the circumstances, that we find more material.

We wrote our first songs together, we grew up together and we lived our lives together. And when we’d do it together, something special would happen. There’d be that little magic spark.

— Paul McCartney, in Bill Harry’s The Paul McCartney Encyclopedia (2003).

We read each other. We’d grown up together! (…) We’d been teenagers together, I’d been sitting in his bedroom listening to Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, we’d been taking down the words together when we were like 16/17. So we’ve actually grown up together. So that, if he said: “Gotta be like Chuck Berry!” I knew what record he meant. I knew even what line he was talking about! You know? So, we read each other in that respect.

— Paul McCartney, interview for the Today Show (6 July 1997).

With John and I, it was so special, I think both of us knew we couldn’t get that again. And it’s proved itself, through time, to be as special as it felt when we were doing it. So I don’t think that could happen again. We really were a complete fluke – just two kids who happened to meet up in Liverpool and share an interest and start writing songs together. And then developed, organically, together. And had the same sense of humour. And learned things at the same rate. Found out about Vietnam together. Little things. All of these little awarenesses pretty much hit us at the same time over a period of years. And you really become soulmates when that happens.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Mark Binelli for Rolling Stone: Sir Paul rides again. (October 20th, 2005)

No matter what’s happened, even though John’s dead, I don’t feel like we are ever gonna be apart. I think we’re a part of each other’s lives, we’re a part of each other’s karma, man!

He was a lovely guy, you know. And it gets sadder and sadder to be saying “was”. Nearer to when he died I couldn’t believe I was saying “was”, but now I do believe I’m saying “was”. I’ve resisted it. I’ve tried to pretend he didn’t get killed… it’s a bit sad. But anyway, I was blessed to be in The Beatles, to work with John. Something, somewhere… you know they talk about a gift of songwriting, well that was a pretty cool gift whoever gave it me.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Mat Snow for MOJO (November, 1995).

Paul seems to take a causality approach, with a bit of occasional baffling at the mysterious workings of fate sprinkled in. In typical Macca fashion, he condenses in himself the apparently paradoxical views of people as pavers of their own paths – we became soulmates because of the circumstances, because we chose to spend all that time together – and people as participants in a big cosmic play – we were brought together in the first place by something, somewhere, blessed to be a part of each other’s lives, each other’s karma.

But overall, it is very important to realise that despite attributing the initial circumstances to chance or a higher-power – them meeting at that particular moment and clicking so well immediately – Paul seems to value shared time, space and experiences as some of the biggest factors behind the magic.

They became soulmates, by virtue of growing up and living their lives together.

This places the agency and the responsibility of making it work right in their own hands. You want to be that close, that attuned, that in-sync with the other to the point of feeling like you can read each other’s minds? Right, you have to actually spend the time together, to accrue shared references and memories that will end up developing into that unspoken language. You can’t expect to have been born on this planet inherently capable of communicating with your preordained soulmate.

And that brings us to John.

John is awesome because despite having all those overpowering emotions and traumas inside him, he wasn’t actually afraid of engaging in some introspection and facing those feelings head-on. Because of this, he was able of evolving much faster (or at least, even when he couldn’t always change his actions, he seemed willing to try and become self-aware enough to understand why he was acting that way in the first place).

So let’s see, after 40 years of getting to know himself, what answers did Johnny reach:

John: Well, you’re asking why we met. I mean, I don’t know. It’s like asking why you were born. I can give you theories of karmic pasts and things like that, but I’ve no idea why. But why it continues is because we want it to continue and work to continue. There seem to be certain cycles that relationships go through. The critical points are at different parts of the different cycles. The new way of talking is like, “Well, why work on a relationship? We just stop and get another one.” But the karmic joke is, presuming you’re lucky enough to find a new relationship anywhere near the relationship you’re giving up – or exchanging, or walking away from, or destroying by inattention or inadvertence of selfishness, or whatever it is – that you have to go through it over and over and over again right up until you’re seventy. People never grasp the fact that they’re going to have to go through the same thing again. They get to the sort of five-year stretch or the seven-year itch or whatever these tension points are, that seem to be organic, built in, like the tide coming in and going out. It’s like every time the tide goes out, you quit—you move your house of something, I’m not making it clear here but you get where I’m going…

Sheff: Yes, yes, but what made you see that?

John: When [Yoko] kicked me out, I saw I was kicked out. When I was kicked out, I realised where I was, which was on a raft in the middle of the universe, and whatever happened, presuming I could have started another relationship, I would have ended up in the same place—if I was lucky. And that’s a big if.

Sheff: You’re speaking about your separation in the early Seventies.

John: Seventy-three, or whenever we were separated, which is sort of a very cold way of saying it. It took a while, but that’s what I saw. If I was lucky… It’s like what they say about karma. If you don’t get it right in this lifetime, you have to come back and go through it again. Well, those laws that are sort of cosmically talked about – accepted or not, but talked about apply down to the most minute detail of life, too. It’s like ‘Instant Karma,’ which is my way of saying it, right? It’s not just some big cosmic thing, although it’s that as well, but it’s also the small things, like your life here and your relationship with the person you want to live with and be with. There are laws governing that relationship, too. You can either give up halfway up the hill and say, “I don’t want to climb the mountain, it’s too tough, I’m going to go back to the bottom and start again,” or you can do it this time.

Sheff: But you once decided it was too tough.

John: I did. But I didn’t see any of this then. Yoko and I were lucky enough to go through that and come back and pick up where we left off, although it took us some kind of effort and energy to – to blend in again and get in the same sync again. It took some time.

— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

It is with great love and affection that I see John’s matured insights: that despite having met under cosmically mysterious circumstances, the choice to build it into something more is in your hands.

“Why it continues is because we want it to continue and work to continue.”

But John, like Paul, seems to have only gained this wisdom with the benefit of time and experience. It was with the perspective afforded by the passage of years that Paul came to fully realise and appreciate how truly special and improbably “perfect for each other” they were. And John “took his lucky break” and realised how hard it was to “find a new relationship anywhere near the relationship you’re giving up – or exchanging, or walking away from, or destroying by inattention or inadvertence of selfishness”.

(As an aside, I can’t help but point out how John pretty much disclosed what, in his opinion, made the mountain called JohnandPaul too difficult to climb: his selfishness and Paul’s inattention.)

In the same interview and continuing the reflections on the cyclic nature of relationships started above, and just what he lost by giving it up:

John: In a marriage, or a love affair – when the seven-year-itch or the twelve-year or whatever these things that you have to go through – there comes a point where the marriage collapses because they can’t face that reality, and they go seeking what they thought they should be having, still, somewhere else. I get a new girl, it’ll all be like that again; I get a new boy… But for all marriages, all couples, it’ll all be the same again. But what you lose is what you put into that… relationship. The early stuff – the Hard Day’s Night period, I call it – the early period, was the early equi– se– what I’m – what I’m equating it to is the sexual equivalent of the beginning of a relationship, of people in love. And the Sgt. Pepper-Abbey Road period was the period of maturity in the relationship. And maybe had we gone on together, maybe something more interesting would have come out of it. It would not have been the same. It would have been a different thing. But maybe it wouldn’t either. Maybe it was a marriage that had to end. Some marriages don’t get through that – that phase. It’s hard to speculate about what would have been.

— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

So, John acknowledges how you risk losing a very special relationship and everything you’ve put into it by walking away when it goes through a cyclic tough phase, how he did it once but he “didn’t see any of this then”.

But what didn’t he see back then? Was he too careless and flippant about what they had, not appreciating how unique it was?

No.

John was, even back then, very much aware that this thing with Paul was special. And that, if anything, made it worse. Because now there were (perhaps unconscious) unmeetable expectations weighing down on his belief in the genuineness of the relationship.

If they are cosmically connected, then they should be able to communicate wordlessly, “share in each other’s minds”; if they can read each other’s minds, they should know the other’s every want and need; so if Paul is not innately responding to his wants and needs, he is either actively ignoring John’s suffering (because Paul doesn’t really care about him or, perhaps, because he actually derives pleasure from seeing John down); or Paul can’t actually feel John’s pain intrinsically in the first place, and that would mean that everything that John believed about the specialness of the relationship and the relationship itself was a lie.

And boy, faulty communication sure is one of the fatal flaws in their dynamic! All because there was the assumption that they were so in-tune that they didn’t need to talk! There seemed to be the expectation that everything would flow seamlessly. And if it wasn’t flowing, if anything required a bit of personal input to work it out, then it wasn’t genuine and spontaneous any more. And if the relationship wasn’t real, it wasn’t worth climbing the mountain for. It shouldn’t be a climb at all, but rather an effortless glide, hand-in-hand, through the universe!

John: Because we have plenty of arguments, but we’re also so attuned to each other, and we know each other so well, through the years, that an argument never reaches a climax. Or it never reaches the point where somebody goes off ‘cause they’re done talking, you know.

Q: In other words, it’s forgotten.

John: It’s not forgotten. But we know each other so well, it’s like sort of mind-reading. If an argument’s building up between Ringo and I, say, there comes to a point where we know what’s coming next and it’s all – everybody packs in. Or something – some, “Okay, he wins,” you know. So we have ordinary arguments, like other people, but we don’t – there’s no sort of conflict. All the people who have conflict in show business either get married about nineteen times, they leave the group they’re in and go solo… and nothing ever happens.

— Interview w/ Larry Kane (2 September 1964).

Hindle: What do you think about language?JOHN: I think it’s a bit crummy, you know? It is a drag form of communication, really. We’ll get – we’ll get telepathy. I believe that.Hindle: You believe that?JOHN: Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure as anything I believe. It’s too… Because now we need it so much. […] But it’s hard… it’s that bit, you know. There are – there’s people everywhere of the same mind and it’s just… even amongst ourselves we can’t communicate. Which is the hard bit, you know. Hindle: Yeah.JOHN: Amongst the people that sort of really agree. Hindle: Just ’cause of words?JOHN: Just ’cause of words, and upbringing, and attitude, and how you express your… Well, it’s just some – you’ve got to find a mutual sort of language to express yourself, you know? And my language is that—Hindle: Unless you fall in love it’s impossible to communicate like that. JOHN: I mean, I wasn’t in love last year, but I was communicating quite well with people. Not as well, or maybe not as powerfully. ’Cause now there’s two of us, doing that, brrmmm, whatever it is. Sending out a vibration or whatever. But before it was me and… or me and George, alright, or whatever it was; we weren’t in love, but. You know. There’s enough in you to shove it out. It is just that bit. If you – if somebody comes in a room and he’s uptight and that, he can make the whole room uptight.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Maurice Hindle (December 1968).

It’s sort of complicated but sometimes you say things, but it’s not really what you meant to say. If I say something to you and you hear it different from what I’ve said it, and you answer back and we’re not really getting down to it. I’m really talking like that you know. Like somebody says ‘do you want ice cream?’ and I’ll say no, and actually I meant yes. You find yourself saying the opposite of what you mean. This happens to me quite a lot. I speak a lot, but what I say is not always what I mean.

— John Lennon, when talking about I Know (I Know) (1973).

Laverdiere: [The Family Way soundtrack] was actually the first time you would officially compose outside the Lennon-McCartney tandem.

Paul: Yes, and you know, it’s funny. That’s true. It’s funny because talking to Yoko recently, you know, you talk about all these things that happen way back in history. It turns out John was not pleased; but I didn’t know ‘til a year ago that he wasn’t pleased. He always told me, “Fine.” ‘Cause he’d been acting in a film – he did a film called How I Won The War – so we started to do little solo thing, just for a change, just for a break, and so I assumed, I asked him, “Is it okay with you?” He said, “Yeah, fine, fine.”

But Yoko told me that he was actually a little bit put off by that, because he hoped probably that I would say Lennon-McCartney will write this together. But to me it seemed a good opportunity to get away of what I did normally. But Yoko just told me apparently John was a little bit hurt about that. Which is sad. But we did actually talk about it. He just never told me at that time. He probably just covered up.

—Paul McCartney, interview w/ Michel Laverdière. (May 23rd, 1995)

‘Rigby’’s, um, his first verse, and the rest of the verses are basically mine. But the way he did it was – uh, was he had the song, and he knew he’d got the song. So rather than ask me, “John, do these lyrics—” Because by that period, he didn’t want to say that – to me. Okay? So what he would say was, “Hey, you guys, finish off the lyrics,” while he was sort of fiddling around with the track or something, or – or arranging it, in the other part of the giant studio in EMI.

Now, I sat there with Mal Evans, a road manager who was a telephone installer, and Neil Aspinall, who was a not-completed student accountant who became our road manager. And I was insulted and hurt that he’d thrown it out in the air, but I wanted to grab a piece of it, and I wrote it with them sitting at the table. So. There might be a version that they contributed, but there isn’t a line in there that they put in.

But that’s how it – [Paul] just sort of— ‘Cause that’s the kind of insensitivity he would have – which made me upset in the later years – because to him, that meant nothing. But that’s the kind of person he is. So he threw ‘em out and said, “Here, finish these up,” like – to anybody, who was around. [By saying that] actually he meant I was to do it, but – you know, Neil and Mal were sitting there, and…

— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

John: We don’t really write together any more. We haven’t written together for two years. Not really. Just occasional bits we help… somebody’s got to use a line or two.

Miles: How does that affect you when you’re playing then?

John: It doesn’t make any odds, who writes them. It’s when The Beatles perform that makes it into Beatle music. It’s a long time since we’ve sat down and written together for many reasons, because we used to write together mainly on tour. Then there was a valid reason for it. It got false – “Come round to my house and we’ll write some songs” – it doesn’t work anymore.

—John Lennon, interview w/ Barry Miles, (partially) unpublished. (September 23rd, 1969)

But in the early days of performing, whether it was Hamburg or Liverpool, when we were still playing dance halls, there was still a lot of inspirational energy. We hadn’t started repeating our little movements, our little licks. So in that respect, the Beatles’ live creativity had gone long before they came to America. And in the same respect, the creativity of songwriting had left Paul and me… well by the mid-Sixties it had become a craft.

And yet… a different kind of thing comes in. It’s like a love affair. When you first meet, you can have the hots twenty-four hours a day for each other. But after fifteen or twenty years, a different kind of sexual and intellectual relationship develops, right? It’s still love, but it’s different. So there’s that kind of difference in creativity too. As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it’s happening. One takes to drugs, to drinks, to knock oneself out…

— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

I was really going through the “What’s it all about?” type thing – this songwriting is nothing, it’s pointless, and I’m no good, I’m not talented, and I’m shitty, and I couldn’t do anything but be a Beatle. What am I going to do about it? It lasted nearly two years and I was still in it during Pepper. I know Paul wasn’t at the time; he was feeling full of confidence, and I was going through murder during those periods.

—John Lennon, interview w/ Barry Miles, (partially) unpublished. (September 23rd, 1969)

You can get a picture of how this expectation of implicit understanding between them when mixed with the insecurity in the other’s love they harboured, bred a lot of hurts…

It takes two to tango, of course. I won’t really get into how Paul’s avoidance of his own feelings and implicit expectation that John would know how much he meant to him, without Paul having to look those emotions in the eye for too long or make himself vulnerable by saying them out loud, had a part to play in this. I have touched upon this in other posts and hope to go deeper in the future, but this has run away from me as it is!

It makes me happy that, even if only in retrospect, their approach to this special, magical, cosmic connection they shared evolved from the naive view that the relationship had to carry itself own the back of its own merits, to the more mature understanding that it continues because they want it to continue and work to continue. As John put it: Love is a flower and you have to water it.

Once again, thank you so much for the ask, and forgive me for losing myself completely down this rather angsty rabbit-hole… But feel free to explore the tags for more appreciations of the magical quality of Lennon/McCartney!

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