Saint John Lennon It’s About Time! Daniel Hartwell Roseanne Bottone Saint John Lennon: It’s About Time! Website: www.SaintJohnLennon.com Author: Daniel Hartwell [email protected] Writer: Roseanne Bottone [email protected] Book Cover Image of John Lennon by Oldmaison Flickr: https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3294/3093077315_7d2b7268ab.jpg Some Rights Reserved/License agreement: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode Book Cover Design by Gay Stahr [email protected] Print ISBN: 9781947289321 This is a work of fiction. Please read disclaimers located before endnotes Copyright © 2017 Hartwell and Bottone All Rights Reserved ii Dedicated to my big brothers Doug and Dave. Thank you for playing music by the Beatles and John Lennon every day when I was a child. You taught me about peace and love. iii Saint John Lennon: It’s About Time! The future influences the present just as much as the past - Friedrich Nietzsche iv PROLOGUE ZEPHYR Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I, But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. - Christina Rossetti The Christmas sky hangs low and sullen over Liverpool this Monday morning. Shivering uncontrollably at the side door of St. Peter’s Church, 10-year-old John Winston Lennon turns up his coat collar against a bone-chilling mist. He shoves his fists into his pockets and, while he waits for the sexton to admit him to the choir’s rehearsal room, clutches his overcoat tightly from within. A flurry of movement erupts behind the boy as parishioners scurry past the cemetery at the side of the church. Heads down as they take refuge inside their place of worship, the church-goers do not notice the tiniest opening cutting through the gloomy clouds. Outside, the air crackles and whooshes as a ray of sunshine blazes forth and lands at John’s feet. The aperture dilates as if it were the iris of an eye adjusting to the darkness below. Lifting his gaze, John’s face is bathed in a marmalade warmth. The sky in this magical place is a cerulean blue where a lollipop sun Saint John Lennon: It’s About Time! glows all lemon. The mountains are a sweet purple hue, and ruby- red strawberry fields stretch on forever. Musical notes rain down, hover around the boy, and assemble to form playful melodies. The boy jumps to snatch the notes and laughs when they burst like soap bubbles. He leaps three feet into the air and remains there, suspended weightless, until he floats back down to earth and his feet settle gently upon the ground. ∞ It doesn’t seem odd that the sky opened up for me. I had been expecting something wonderful to happen. My childhood years were blessed with enchanting little moments all along the way. I talked to the trees and whispered to the stars and paid attention to the extraordinary. When I was five years old, my mother told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.1 The world is full of surprises. They are diaphanous spirits coursing through space. But unlike comets following a known trajectory, surprises zip and zing until they find an opening to land. Where some of them alight is purposeful. We attract happy surprises with the thoughts we project; they know how to find us. They pick up our signals and head right for us when we make a place for them in our hearts. Sad surprises descend on us too. Sometimes it’s instant karma and sometimes flashes of randomness occur across the universe, and there’s no avoiding them. I was surprised when the music of my life changed suddenly as I lay dying in front of the Dakota apartment building. I rose from my own body and watched the scene below. Musical notes appeared once more, swirling softly out of focus; this time they became my wings. 2 Prologue Zephyr ∞ The creaking of rusty hinges startles the boy out of his reverie. The heavy wooden church door groans as the old sexton pushes it open. “Did you hear that, sir?” John asks. “Hear what, lad?” “The music, sir, it was beautiful. It came from the sky.” “Are you daft, boy? It’s freezing out here. The choir master is waiting. Get into your robe now. Off you go!” “But, sir, there were musical notes all over and I was floating.” “Imagine! You’re such a dreamer!” the sexton says. Hurrying John inside, he lugs the door closed without an outward glance. A few lingering notes rise back into the light, carried away by a wind perfumed with frankincense and myrrh. ∞ Life no longer has a clear beginning, middle, or end. It’s like watching a movie on a big screen. The plot unfolds in a linear way and then the end credits roll. The story is supposed to make sense. You think it’s over, but it’s not. When the theater lights come back on, out we go, tumbling into the street. We feel the emotion of what we’ve witnessed and now the new things we experience are affected by that. We continue living, but it’s a different life than the one we lived before we went in. My story isn’t over; peace and love are eternal. Long ago, a miracle was reserved for me. 3 I AM THE EGG MAN Music is the space between the notes. – Claude Debussy What goes through the mind of a man who is about to become a murderer? Of course I wonder, of course; yes. I’m only human. He waited for me outside my apartment building for hours while Yoko and I were at the recording studio. He knew how he wanted it to play out. Did he think of his wife? Did he think of my wife? My children? When I stepped out of the limo and walked by him, he heard a voice telling him over and over again, “Do it, do it, do it.” 2 He believed a demonic power was at work. Yeah, I know he said he had an abusive childhood. Underneath he was suffering. Still that’s no justification for the path he chose as a grown man. Taking my life was not the solution to anything. I could ask him about this when we meet. We’ll see. It doesn’t matter, really. What’s done cannot be undone. Some questions can’t be answered − we just have to accept that. Wait a sec… let me pour myself more tea. I want to ask you about this photo. Wait, where is it? Here. This one. Paul Goresh took it. Have you seen it? I was autographing a copy of Double Fantasy for Mark earlier in the afternoon on the day he killed me. I don’t remember doing this. Fans asked for my autograph all the time. He was a bit odd, but there was nothing about him that stood out. He looks happy. It was the last photo ever taken of me in my first go ‘round. You might know these things. Hey, sorry if you do. I Am The Egg Man Mark David Chapman may be infamous, but it seems I’m the only person who knows nothing of my own murder. It’s all a revelation to me. When Mark read one of my interviews – the one in the London Evening Standard – he said he wanted to scream out loud, “Who does he 3 think he is, saying these things about God and heaven and the Beatles?” He told the police he was pissed off at me for my comment about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus. It was taken out of context anyway. He murdered me because he wanted notoriety. He wanted to become somebody. I mean, how sad is that? Be compassionate when you think about all of this, OK? The chap was delusional. Doctors said he was psychotic. A few years before he shot me, he was depressed and tried to commit suicide. People like you and me who get high on life can’t understand the depth of such distress. Mark wrote a letter to his friend that said “I’m going nuts” and signed it “The Catcher in the Rye.” Supposedly he related to the main character in that book − what was his name? Yeah, Holden Caulfield, that’s right. Mark was desperate for the kind of human contact that had meaning, and he craved love. All you need is love, man. Love is the answer. The question is irrelevant. It’s the only thing that will save us. That’s my gospel. If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliché that must have been left behind in the '60s, that's a problem.4 Yes, I do forgive him − as much for me as for him. Forgiveness doesn’t require full comprehension. You’re reticent. OK, I get it. Beauty and forgiveness take time to blossom. A bud doesn’t just burst overnight into a flower. ∞ A sharp, searing “pop” echoes through the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The metronome ticks. Another gunshot... Tick… Another… Tick... Another… Tick… The last… Tick. Five 5 Saint John Lennon: It’s About Time! .38-caliber bullets played in staccato. Mortally wounded, the victim stumbles forward and collapses face down.