Saturday, November 20, 2010

Hey Jude

Like a lot of people, I'm thrilled that The Beatles albums are finally available on iTunes. I've never been one for CD's, even before the MP3 era kicked in a few years ago, and so I've been gradually building my comparatively miniscule and haphazard music library almost exclusively buying songs one by one from some guy named Steve Jobs. Anyway, up until recently, one of the few artists whose work wasn't available on iTunes was probably the most popular entertainment act of the 20th Century, and at long last, I can start getting actual Beatles songs rather than others covering their songs. I'm super poor right now, so I'll have to wait until after my birthday and Christmas to collect some iTunes gift cards to suppliment my catalogue with these missing favorites of mine.

One of my favorite Beatles songs is "Hey Jude", written by Paul McCartney. It's one of those good songs to play when you're feeling depressed. It can lift up your spirits at a time when you're feeling particularly low, and for me, that's worth the $1.29 it costs to download it. In anticipation of getting this and other songs in a month or so (yes, I'm that poor), I was perusing the internets and reading up on some of my favorite Beatles songs, and I noticed an interesting note on this one.

The story McCartney tells is that the song was for John Lennon's son Julian, as at the time Lennon and his wife were getting divorced, and McCartney felt bad for the boy whose parents were splitting, and he wrote the song for him. Lennon, who really liked the song (at that point in their relationship, Lennon and McCarthy liking each other's songs was particularly rare), and he thought that the song was for him during this tumultuous time in his life. McCartney told Lennon that he had actually wrote the song for himself. Still others have speculated that the song was written for them or other people, which I suppose is common to fans of music.

We have a tendency to self-apply things in our lives with the pieces that move us emotionally. In order to establish that connection with an artistic work, sometimes we have to find a way to convince ourselves that the artist had us in mind when they created it. Not literally, but in some spiritual or metaphysical way.

As an "artist" in my own medium of writing, I utilize my own experiences and the people in my life into my writing all the time. I realize that, when it works, the passage might be a representation of myself or someone I know. But to the reader who has no knowlege of me or anyone in my life, it's possible for them to imagine that I'm actually writing about them, and in some curious way, my writing has brought me and them closer together.

Anyway, The Beatles should provide some good writing music to listen to, and hopefully give me some inspiration.