The minds eye is an infinitely versatile object, capable of rendering objects that the most dedicated artist would find impossible to make look real. In dreams we see another reality, and it is in dreams where this node begins.

Imagine, if you will, the multiverse. A huge sphere of multicoloured points linked in ways our minds, conceived in one of these points, cannot possibly see. And yet there is something around it. A sprinkling of blue sparkles surrounds the entire area, around every point they eddy and swirl, gradually focusing on one point, pointing, leading, like iron fillings to a magnet, and onto one point they focus and the mind shifts perspective.

We are inside one of the points of the multiverse, one of the nodes, one of the universes. There are many more, governed by magic, words, or just the same more-or-less logical rules that bind our own universe together, for that is where we are. And the blue sparkles are here also, spinning and flowing towards another, smaller point, a swirl in the galaxy, and we zoom in further.

And further, though the clouds of stars, focusing on a string that is orbiting the galaxy in mindnumbing slowness, and yet travelling faster than many thought possible.

Onto a single star, orbited by 9 objects of varying size, and as we circle the sun - as all the rocks do - we can see the sparkles head toward a single planet, a blue-green planet.

We spin past the lands, though the daytime, the evening and into the night, and in the darkness we focus on a small triangular country which for the sake of argument we shall call "England" and from there into the south-eastern corner, midway between the bright lights of the big city and the calmness of the sea to the south.

And closer do we zoom, to a single room, and a single computer, as the blue sparkles collate and solidify into a young male, typing at his keyboard. The figure of Aquarion, posting random things to Everything.

A rainbow of flashes

Of colorful fishes

Swimming beneath the stars

Clouds made of gases

And planets of ashes

With nights that are nothing like ours

Both floating and frozen

This placed I have chosen

Far from the cruel human kind

With life from the deep sea

This place could only be

A world from within my mind

"OH GODS NO MAKE IT STOP!!!"

- Your Most Humble Narrator, upon hearing "Imagine" for the latest, innumerable time.

John Lennon's "Imagine" is often cited as one of the greatest individual songs of all time. Indeed, the greatest song of all time. Its influence is undoubted and it was the subject of some controversy when it first appeared. Even today, almost forty years on from its first release, many, many people will happily shower it with praise and so forth.

It is, in short, a sacred cow in the world of popular music. And as such, I'm more than happy to turn it into so much inexpensive hamburger meat.

You see, I find the song cloying, mawkish, and naively idealistic. I also find it overrated because of the fact that unless you are willing to fap yourself red raw over the dirge-like piano melody and the hopelessly fawning lyric you are seen as some sort of, well, callous capitalist warmongering bastard whoreson. But folks... there's nothing genius about this pipe dream of everyone being all together and happy and sunny. It's been a recurring human pipe dream for millennia, however, it is also not going to happen. People are too venal, mendacious, grasping and so forth for it ever to take place. And that, friends and neighbours, you can take to the bank.

Then there's the fact it's so OVERRATED and OVERPLAYED. Why? Why? Why? Why does anyone think that some Liverpudlian stoner mumbling over a dirge (which is what it is) is worthy of note? It isn't. It's depressing, pathetic, and worse still, boring.

Oh yes. It's also a mite hypocritical, as well, that the man who wrote, "imagine no possessions" owned a specially refrigerated room in his New York abode just for his collection of fur coats. It is also hypocritical that the company that peddled this message of everyone being equal and everything shared was willing to coin it in mercilessly by flogging same, but to be fair I can't blame BMI too much. After all, there's been money in pretending to care for as long as anyone can remember. Band Aid anyone? We know it's great PR at Christmas time.

Kinda puts Rolling Stone's appraisal of the song as "virtually the Communist Manifesto" into perspective, really, doesn't it?

I prefer Cassetteboy's rework of it, where a voice says, "The Ultimate Challenge - let's make this worse," and then they mix the piano loop in with the Crazy Frog and then, after that, have someone shouting and screaming in agony, followed by a burst of machine gun fire and an ominous silence. I sympathise entirely with that poor chap.

So. Well now. Rather than going on about "give peace a chance," how about actually Doing Something to ensure that peace gets a chance. Didn't see Lennon and Ono out gettin' beaten by National Guards in the Vietnam anti-war protests, did ye? And ye don't see Bono and that other vainglorious knob, yano, the one whose kids all have bloody stupid names, Bob Geldof, out there digging artesian wells either, do ya? Well then. I would have infinity times more respect for all those wanky music critics and student politics if they actually went out there and Did Something rather than pontificated about it. And Imagine is the apotheosis of well-meaning pontification.

(Node 2 of 30 of my IRON NODES).

Im*ag"ine (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Imagined (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Imagining.] [F. imaginer, L. imaginari, p.p. imaginatus, fr. imago image. See Image.]

1.

To form in the mind a notion or idea of; to form a mental image of; to conceive; to produce by the imagination.

In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear! Shak.

2.

To contrive in purpose; to scheme; to devise; to compass; to purpose. See Compass, v. t., 5.

How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? Ps. lxii. 3.

3.

To represent to one's self; to think; to believe.

Shak.

Syn. -- To fancy; conceive; apprehend; think; believe; suppose; opine; deem; plan; scheme; devise.

 

© Webster 1913.


Im*ag"ine, v. i.

1.

To form images or conceptions; to conceive; to devise.

2.

To think; to suppose.

My sister is not so defenseless left As you imagine. Milton.

 

© Webster 1913.

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