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John Updike has Died

John Updike, Massachusetts, mid 1960s

I can’t even begin to express my profound sadness upon hearing the news of John Updike’s passing. Back in the late 1970s when I was getting very interested in literature, Updike was the man I most wanted to be. From my point of view as a young man in his early twenties who had recently fallen in love with the world of letters, Updike’s life seemed quintessentially literate — the one I wanted for myself.

Updike said that he wrote most often about the world he was reared in, “the small-town middle class,” as he described it to Life magazine in 1966. “It is in the middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.”

Today most commentators have spoken and written about Updike’s “Rabbit” novels (especially Rabbit Run), which feature the protagonist Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom — the American everyman, the displaced American male. And although Rabbit Run had a huge impact on me in my early adulthood, for me the center of his world will always be the short story The Music School, which was the place where I, the reader, participated most in Updike’s imagination.

Listen to Helen Jane Long’s “Porcelain,” the mood of which seems perfect for Updike’s level of humanity.

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Across the Universe

Listen to the Song

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Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, They slither while they pass they slip away across the universe Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind, Possessing and caressing me Jai guru de va om Nothing’s gonna change my world Nothing’s gonna change my world Nothing’s gonna change my world Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter, shades of earth are ringing
Through my open ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns and calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Jai guru deva [Repeat to fade]

Background

The following is mostly lifted from a great Beatles page called The Beatles Bible. Check it out for more information.

Some interpretations of Across the Universe can be found here.

This song’s lyrics came to John Lennon in the early hours one morning at his home in Kenwood.

I was lying next to my first wife in bed and I was thinking. It started off as a negative song and she must have been going on and on about something. She’d gone to sleep and I kept hearing, ‘Words are flowing out like endless streams…’ I was a bit irritated and I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than, ‘Why are you always mouthing off at me?…The words are purely inspirational and were given to me – except for maybe one or two where I had to resolve a line or something like that. I don’t own it; it came through like that.

Part of the song’s chorus – ‘Jai guru deva, om’ – is a Sanskrit phrase which roughly translates as ‘Victory to God divine’. It was likely inspired by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom The Beatles had met in August 1967. The Maharishi’s spiritual master was called Guru Dev. ‘Jai’ is a Hindi word meaning ‘long live’ or ‘victory’, and ‘om’ is a sacred syllable in the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religions.

In 1970 John Lennon was quoted in Rolling Stone:

It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written. In fact, it could be the best. It’s good poetry, or whatever you call it, without chewin’ it. See, the ones I like are the ones that stand as words, without melody. They don’t have to have any melody, like a poem, you can read them.

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Waiting on a Friend

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Single by Rolling Stones
from the album Tattoo You

Watching girls go passing by
It aint the latest thing
Im just standing in a doorway
Im just trying to make some sense
Out of these girls go passing by
The tales they tell of men
Im not waiting on a lady
Im just waiting on a friend

A smile relieves a heart that grieves
Remember what I said
Im not waiting on a lady
Im just waiting on a friend
Im just waiting on a friend

Dont need a whore
I dont need no booze
Dont need a virgin priest
But I need someone I can cry to
I need someone to protect
Making love and breaking hearts
It is a game for youth
But Im not waiting on a lady
Im just waiting on a friend

“What a Wonderful World”

This song has a hopeful and optimistic tone with regard to the future, and beautifully illuminates Emerson’s idea about finding “the journey’s end in every step of the road” (from Emerson’s “Experience”).

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I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Dixie Chicks and Transcendentalism

I love this song, especially the stuff about striking out on your own, chasing a dream, and finding your place in the sun – pure transcendentalism.

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“Wide Open Spaces”

Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed

[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes

As her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leaving my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes

John Lennon’s Laptop Commercial

John Lennon

Almost three decades after his death, John Lennon still proves to be a popular household name as the former Beatle has suddenly appeared in a charity commercial. How amazing is that? Especially since he’s been dead for twenty-eight years..

In the commercial Lennon encourages people to donate to a campaign started by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which distributes solar-powered XO laptops to the world’s poorest children. The commercial was approved by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and premiered on Christmas Day.

Lennon’s voiceover: “Imagine every child no matter where in the world they were could access a universe of knowledge. They would have a chance to learn, to dream, to achieve anything they want. I tried to do it through my music, but now you can do it in a very different way. You can give a child a laptop and more than imagine, you can change the world.”

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