In My Life

I was wading through paperwork at the studio this morning. With the sound system shuffling randomly through a long list of favorite tracks in the background, I waxed nostalgic at songs that I grew up listening to and even sang along with some. One song stopped me and made me listen. It was recorded in October of 1965 and released on The Beatle's "Rubber Soul" album - John Lennon's ode to his past, "In My Life". As I understand it, Lennon wrote this song as a tribute to his old neighborhood in Liverpool, from his house on Menlove Avenue down to the Mersey Docks. Lennon's Liverpool was a hard-scrabble working-class neighborhood, much the same as my old Northeast...

"There are places I'll remember, All my life, though some have changed,
Some forever, not for better, Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments, With lovers and friends I still can recall,
Some are dead and some are living, In my life I’ve loved them all."

The next day, I drove around Kansas City's "Historic Northeast" - Belmont to St. John, Topping to the Old House, down Hardesty to the Avenue, back up to Benton and the Concourse, Gladstone Boulevard, Sunrise Drive, Van Brunt, North Quincy, Budd Park, 9th, 11th and 12th streets and back to work downtown. Circles within circles looking for something familiar.

"But of all these friends and lovers, There is no one compared with you,
And these memories lose their meaning, When I think of love as something new."

Lennon left his Liverpool behind when the Beatles' fame and fortune made him a citizen of the world and ultimately Manhattan. I left Northeast behind as I grew away from my parents and set out to prove my own worth. It was a tall order to be sure, and one I wasn't sure I was up to. Looking back now, I realize that my vision of my old Northeast was myopic. It was a hard and imperfect life, made bearable by the lack of necessity that comes with being young and dependent. All I had to do was try and get along, do my best not to flunk out of school and try not to embarrass my folks more than necessary. Nostalgia is a kind of selective blindness that, like sloppy thinking, gets worse over time.

I'm in a far different place now. Not so much a matter of place in space and time, but a knowing realization that I've done so much more than I ever thought possible, most after I left the comfort of youth. There are those who would say that John Lennon's best years were before he became political, before he married Yoko Ono, before "Give Peace A Chance". I don't think so. I'd like to think that Lennon was growing and celebrating life up to the very end. I'd like to think I'm just getting started.

"Though I know I’ll never lose affection For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them. In my life I love you more."

Northeast, I loved and respected you, maybe even feared you at times. Your no-nonsense reality gave me a foundation for life that I might never had understood had I been born into privilege in another place. So much has happened since then that you have to know that I am no longer nostalgic when I think about my time there. It would be dishonest to say that I owe everything I am to you. You are my Liverpool. I don't live in The Dakota, and I'll never have a fraction of John Lennon's talent or fame, but I understand his fondness at looking back, not in bittersweet longing, but in celebration of a life lived well. To me, "In My Life" was a goodbye to times past and a triumph over nostalgia. Lennon could see how much was to be lived and loved in the here and now.

"Though I know I’ll never lose affection For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them. In my life I love you more."

Every street in Northeast has an indelible memory for me to return to - people, good times, not so good times, loves and heartbreaks, joy and pain. My ode to you, Northeast, celebrates how I found what I was looking for, not there and then, but here and now. Love songs are not about being in love. They're about love lost, longing for impossible love and the perfect possibilities of "might have been". I wouldn't trade my now 2006 for my then 1968 for any promise of youth or second chances. I'll always remember you and what you once were to me, but my heart is my own now.