29 years ago today this news shocked the world: “On the night of 8 December 1980, at around 10:50 pm, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times in the entrance of the Dakota apartment building. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman who had been stalking Lennon since October.“
It’s true that we kill our prophets and Lennon was no exception. As Lennon traveled the road of fame and fortune he began to see the world for what it was. An entire generation awakened with him realizing that the world must be changed. Although the tide rose toward genuine social and spiritual change in the 60’s, that wave rolled back never quite reaching the shore.
Lennon’s memory lives on and his dreams of peace can still be realized by our generation. It’s not too late. We just have to want it and act.
A friend emailed this to me this morning and I was really impressed. It’s an amazing little piece of animation about a person I love. I can’t really rewrite the description any better than it is already written so here it is (enjoy): “In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
