Strawberry Fields Forever

When John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever, he was thinking "There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. As a child, I would say, 'But this is going on!' and everybody would look at me as if I was crazy. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way. It was scary as a child, because there was nobody to relate to."

It is precisely this feeling of not fitting in, being almost constantly misunderstood, that motivated unique minds to express themselves differently. Thinking in retrospect, I find myself letting out a deep sigh, saying "yeah, tell me about it!" For I too belong to Strawberry Fields. At some moment in my life I was wondering "where the heck did the ship which had dropped me onto this planet disappeared? Why did my folks leave me behind?" Then it was like, "or maybe there ain't any folks of mine! What made you think you have any affiliations, Fantasia?"

Doubting yourself is by far the worst thing you can ever do. Yes, you become a natural haters-magnet (that's part of the package, you know) but your meanest enemies could not harm you a bit without you getting into this self-destructive mode. Still, as it turns out, all my folks allowed themselves to slip into it for some time.

The good news is, it turned out that I did have folks!.. My creed! *wide grin* Fellow aliens with the same hallucinations that I had! Hurray!.. I was not one of a kind!

But it took me a long long time to realize they existed. Wow!!.. What a moment that was! It was like discovering a fellow castaway on a neighboring island. How amazing can this be, huh? And then you start receiving these bottled messages and your jaw drops with awe at how similar your experiences have been. Then this alien leads you to another and another.. until you finally find it.. your spot, your world, your Xanadu .. strawberry fields.

The thing is.. although Lennon drove the name from an actual place where he had lived for sometime, he used the name to refer to this alien-dropping-spaceship, which still is not located, you see. So, ehm, this place actually exists in our heads. Yeah, we're sort of equipped with wide wide imagination. So we do see this place, we know it, we thrive on it, we're nourished by thinking about it, yet.. we can't get there. Even more, we know, in our sober state of mind, that we don't have a chance of ever getting there. It is unattainable.. and there lies the dilemma.

Well, I hope I didn't lose you by now.. sounding too vague and, maybe, spooky. Come on guys, I haven't gone that crazy.. at least not yet. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to analyze why generations and generations of my folks ended up shut into their own universe. (Mind you, it is a universe.. it is so vast.. stretching endlessly.. but way out there, far from our reality.) Not just so,.. Unable to resist this aggressive desire of wanting to change the actual world, they almost always completely screw up, causing this huge discomfort and disturbance, then end up in a very dramatic way, leaving their work undone.

Yes, they do inspire others. (You know, this sorta madness is contagious.) They have this huge impact on arts and culture. But our world, our crappy rusted f***ed-up real world, remains the same. Since the beginning of history.. Since the big bang or whatever.. it has remained the same! Peel off these illusionary layers of modernity, and just LOOK.. hey, IT IS THE DAMN SAME!

Hey life, I believe our worlds do not intersect! I'm off to Strawberry Fields. Yes, I would give up on you, you bitch! You enjoy devouring your lovers and thrive in the arms of your rapers. I HATE YOU!

You know what? I believe my alien buddies have made things even worse. Maybe if they had not interfered things would have been better in any way. You see, they have cast their pixy dust for the street smart guys to use it and sugar-coat all the ugliness there is.. prolonging the life of all evils! Now, thanks to these geniuses, people could live with tyranny, injustice, fraud, fascism, corruption, abuse, crime, deceit, divisions, wars, disease, famine, disaster, global warming.. you name it. All there is.. just wrap it in some shimmery, ethically, romantic, artistic ritual, as part of the process of moving on. Changing the world can be a great theme for a song.. perfect! But in reality, in practice, in our offices, societies, parliaments, governments, world order.. pouf

And as for all the victims falling along the way, there are all the f***ing tributes and stuff. Yeah, once someone is dead, s/he suddenly becomes a hero! But of course.. they've finally left this piece of crap alone! No more disturbance. Rest in peace!

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on." ~Robert Frost