I heard it was you
Talkin’ ’bout a world
Where all is free
It just couldn’t beAnd only a fool would say that
—Walter Becker and Donald Fagen
On a rainy Chicago night fortythree years ago …
No. Scratch it. Turn that heartbeat over again once more–I’ve written and erased the middle of this post at least three times already and now it’s four.
In the autumn of 1971, John Lennon released “Imagine”, advising us all to imagine no possessions, while sitting on a great big pile of them. That’s an easy thing to do.
No need for greed or hunger, JL? I wonder what your wife had to say about that, because we all know by now that the game of greed is both imperial and zero-sum–it’s deep in our blood, both yours and mine, like little chunks of microplastic.
A year later Steely Dan put out a debut record called Can’t Buy A Thrill, which included the song I quoted above.
It was written as a direct response to Lennon’s imaginary prescription, and even way back then they saw more clearly than that poor fuddled and assassinated martyr ever did.
And so at last we come back around to the crying of the sky.
I don’t like it but I guess I’m a-learning.
I saw my baby one morning and she was …
No.
You need to learn just when to quit, hermano, and