I’m reading Memories of John Lennon, collected in book form by Yoko Ono.
Reading this book feels very much like attending a memorial service in introvert form with people who may not have even known the deceased very well coming up and giving short personal eulogies, and you’re able to attend the service for just a few minutes at a time and then leave and then come back later. It’s not perfect — even I as not-even-close-to-a-big-Beatles or Lennon fan can tell it’s imperfect — but I’m enjoying reading it.
My enjoyment of the book jumped up a few notches more with the fourth memory contributed by Joan Baez in the form of a drawing and handwritten letter, published in exactly that format:
Seeing these one-of-a-kind handmade words and images makes this book so much more intimate. These raw personal curves and lines make the distance between the memorializer and the memorialized — their lack of intimacy — more meaningful. The way her limited one-on-one experience with him is compressed into this very real-feeling cartoonish line drawing of a moment she did upside-down with her left hand, and then shared in a brief letter — it is so alive. The screaming of the girls. The screaming of the girls. This extraordinary mass-hysteria thing people remember so vividly and inextricably associated with their time with him, juxtaposed against the interior of a hotel room with all of this white space and a tea service floating around.
This type of memory is similar to so many other people’s, but the drawing, the handwritten words, and the surreal tea service made by her – someone extraordinary in their own right – make it a singular memory. A signature memory.
And one that feels like it is in conversation with the man … that she drew from him. Both doodlers. Both artists. Both performers. Both songwriters and singers and musicians.
There is this lost art of the letter nowadays — or burial of it under so much digital noise — that it is beautiful to see this sort of hand-channeling of a dead man and a past moment to electrify and animate a memory so that it comes to life in a stranger’s hand holding two pages.
*****
Honestly I am not sure if I’d have had the patience for it if the book were formatted this way right out of the gate. While I like the *idea* of posting pictures of handwritten notes, I do find it kind of a chore to read on a phone (and I’m reading this book as an ebook checked out via the Libby app and my library system); like, I would not want every instagram post containing words to be photos of people’s handwriting. I *like* black type on white (and vice versa). It is efficient at conveying information accessibly. But when the information is a personal memory, and the persons are artists … it becomes a love letter to strange moments that live in the head and heart forever. So much more flavor. Like the way she knew to pre-heat the teapot.
Anyway. What a lovely little book, made so much more memorable by the handwriting. The pleasure of committing a scene to paper perfectly-imperfectly, challenged by doing it upside-down and left-handed.
*****
I had not noticed it when I checked the book out, but at least one description highlights the inclusion of these analog snippets:
In their own words and drawings, poems and photos, Lennon’s life from his childhead through the Beatles years to the happiness and tragey of his final days become stunningly vivid.
Overview of MEMORIES OF JOHN LENNON, introduced and edited by Yoko Ono
If all of them are as meaty as this one by Joan Baez … well … stunningly vivid, indeed.
*****
I wonder if every memory would be stunningly vivid against a backdrop of hysterical girls screaming and climbing over each others peacoated backsides to throw their panties? Maybe it’s a generational thing, but those kinds of scenes I saw growing up in every TV mention of the Fab Four and Elvis color so much of the landscape of pop culture and public-yet-private longing and desire so vividly for me.
