“In My Life”–seriously confused

Obviously, John Lennon was (usually) a brilliant lyricist. But that doesn’t mean he was perfect. It’s too bad that one of his finest songs is (spoiler coming) seriously weakened by a confusing contradiction–and one that the lyrics even emphasize, through repetition. The lyric begins with an affectionate look back at “places I’ll remember / all my life.” The things he’s remembering still “have their moments / With lovers and friends I still can recall”– because “I’ve loved them all.”
    True, he then says that all these “friends and lovers” are surpassed by his current love: “There is no one compares with you.” Okay; finding an ultimate love need hardly deny the significance of former loves. But then Lennon goes on to a completely inexplicable line that does totally negate that moving  introduction: ”And these memories lose their meaning / When I think of love as something new.” HUH? But the entire point of the song, up to that point, was to tell us strongly that his early memories have kept  their meaning.  Zig, zag.  And now he zigs again: He immediately goes on to re-state what he said at first (though he’s just denied it!): “Though I know I’ll never lose affection / For people and things that went before.” 
     What’s going on here? In a word (I think), carelessness. Obviously, he couldn’t have meant that line in the middle, the one saying, “These memories lose their meaning”–since most of the song says the precise opposite. In context, it seems he must have meant something like, “These memories change their meaning.” In fact, that modification creates a line in accord with all the rest of the song. Wonder why he didn’t do something like that, or insert some other such line? Or why no one else suggested that? (There was often collaboration on lyrics, as a lot of documentation indicates.)
     Addendum: Of course, Beatles songs often include lines that are illogical or even anti-logical, and sometimes that involves an intentional (and playful) paradox–but sometimes (as here) it seems to be just a puzzling and weakening contradiction. It’s a matter of opinion, of course, as to which situation we’re faced with. 
     For examples of the creative and playful paradox, I’d offer two. From “Yellow Submarine:” “And our friends are all on board. / Many more of them live next door.” That seems altogether too blunt to be a mistake. More interestingly, of course, there is this, from “Penny Lane:” “And though she feels as if she’s in a play / She is anyway.” That may be the ”This statement is false” of song lyrics (see the Wikipedia “Liar paradox”) – a nicely oscillating conundrum, which fits comfortably into the song’s aura of both (literary) absurdity and surrealism.  

 

       

 

Imagine — if people actually listened

It seems weird indeed that John Lennon, so notably crucified (as it were) in the media for saying the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” has gotten a permanent free pass in a lyric that attacks the bedrock institutions of the culture: Religion and capitalism. Imagine not only suggests but recommends that we think of the universe as having “no heaven,” and look forward to a world with ”no possessions.” That neatly encapsulates what the 50s famously excoriated as ”godless Communism,” and seems to be 100 percent opposed to what most Americans still believe. Yet the song has cropped up in the most sacrosant of settings — played at the Olympics and to wake up the astronauts, sung publicly by such conventional figures as Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton, and praised by Jimmy Carter (I’m partly relying on Wikipedia here), etc. Is this not beyond odd? To sing and/or apparently admire a lyric while managing to completely ignore its absolutely clear message? And would John be amused — or irritated?     

Live and let edit, Paul

Assuming this is the correct lyric — “But in this ever-changing world in which we live in” — then McCartney did something really redumb-dant with this: “in  which we live in.” Some people believe he’s singing ”in which we’re livin’,” a dropped-g phrase which avoids such absurdity. (And makes the same money, too.) But it’s hard to hear that crucial “we’re.” So I think the solecism is there, though I doubt if they’ll strip his knighthood for it, at this point.