Evil and The Beatles

Good morning. Breakfast is cooling and I am thinking out loud. There is a brilliant frost about the roof next door, so white and pure. The earth is tipping back toward the fun part for those of us in the northern hemisphere. We will have green again, birds again. Colour returns to Pepperland. Sigh, I do enjoy the definition of seasons. I know that a Caribbean island wouldn’t do for me, I like witnessing change and change back. That change is almost a proof of life, a mark. I have seen a number of changes and changes back in the last seventy-five years. Imagine, twenty year old Robert, it is now fifty-seven years since The Beatles performed their very last concert, the one on the roof of Apple, at Saville Row, London.

I was late to the Beatle wave, the mania. I only saw the very last of three Ed Sullivan shows and vaguely remembered that one. The kids at school were talking about this new group and having seen them on Sunday night but I wasn’t really interested. I was much more caught up in Motown and The Supremes (oh, yes – Mary Wells and The Supremes had hits before November of 1963). Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and those sorts fuelled my ambition to be a writer and go live in New York City’s Greenwich Village. I was borrowing their records from the library, along with books from Rimbaud and Baudelaire. On Saturdays, I would get recordings from stacks at The Dale Carnegie library, rush home and devour them. I was enthralled by my folk-scare heroes and didn’t bother with pop groups. Then, almost as if it were a move into puberty, I heard ‘I Call Your Name’. It was a song from what was released in the U.S. as The Beatles ‘Second Album’. I either woke or fell into a swoon. It still grabs me. Simple, direct, clean, solid and electrical – alive. As soon as I could scrape, beg and borrow…I bought the album, parking it next to ‘Meet the Supremes’ in what was becoming a record collection.

Time passed, many seasons did their changes, I grew fat, I grew old. I had heartbreaking losses and minor successes. I did not live my dream life but I did live. I had enough sex with enough different kinds of people, I made a decent living, I drank too much sometimes and did good deeds sometimes. I deeply disappointed two persons, two spouses. All in, It has been, unbeknownst to me, an average life for North America. I didn’t go off to Greenwich Village but I did become a sort-of writer. It might be said that my writer life is a blessed one. I am able to write when and where and about what I want. There is no money or fame involved. I think that is a blessing. I certainly have witnessed, via the press, the ravages of fame and riches upon others. Time has been Okay for me. Most ordinary people have lived in much the same way. While having my ordinary life, during these many years, my little record collection grew to an unmanageable size. It now resides over two very large bookshelves that only fit in the basement. From time to time, I do play the records, still and just cannot let them go yet. They are still dreams, still emotions.

I recently plunked down a month’s worth of capital for a Disney subscription that will end in April. I did that so that I could finally see the re-worked ‘Let It Be’ film, the one that is called ‘Get Back’ and spans some six-plus hours of viewing. This converted-to-Beatle-fan couldn’t wait any longer to see it and did the whole six-plus hours in one sitting. I know, as an adult, that sitting in front of the set for six hours is not healthy. Ah well, I wasn’t drinking or eating potato chips (crisps, as they say). I had lots of feelings, lots of thoughts. Perhaps it was just the right time in my life to see this film.

I should leave analysis of Beatle films, music to the pros and I will. I do have my opinions, though..as well as an asshole, just like everybody. It was lovely to see those Beatle Boys as young men again. Clean skin, bright eyes, trim frames. They must have changed clothes fifty or sixty times in the twenty-two days worth of filming. I see where they spent the rock and roll money! Ha. Nice shoes, John! The shock, the revelation to me was how much their creative work flows as my own does. It was from one thought to another and ended up being something totally different than the original idea. My guess, now, is that this is the way of art… it is a thing, plucked from the tree of imagination that gets toyed with until it becomes itself.

‘Get Back’ seems a fair representation of the Beatles at work. ‘Let It Be’, the old film, had an agenda, apparently. Comparison of the two films tells me that. This film is much more an art piece, with a solid direction and an undercurrent, a foreshadowing of what was to become of the group. That sad end appears inevitable when Allen Klein’s unscrupulous head pops up.
He was a man, like Trump who appears near the end of everything. Comparing the press of the time to the film, I am now fully convinced, even without the film saying a word negative, that Klein was totally responsible for the end of the Beatles as a group. Sad. The power of evil is quite remarkable.

Following Suggestions

When I was young,

I did not understand what death

meant. Every day,

I propped the still one up and

offered them a plate,

when I made one.

I did this but

they seemed to have no

appetite.

I would sing the name

to no reply

then you came by, said,

“Why not place that

out of doors

and clean the floors?”

The Pill Effect

I told the doctor

that the pills weren’t working,

I did not wake

in a pool of my own vomit.

He laughed.

He said the pill effect

was subtle.

I thought about that.

Is it not love, then…

even if your heart doesn’t

beat itself

out

of your

chest?..

even if it feels more like a relaxed

sigh?..

even if it comes and goes, over forty years

and turns into an occasional,

for no reason,

smile?

Cuore Come Fiore

The bills are current, the bed is made.

It was sunny and bright at eight,

though snow stacks up in

for-a-while-yet

piles.

It is the ‘eye’ of

winter and

we are still alive.

When February slips under

the wild days of March,

what will come?

I am trusting that the heart

is a sturdy crocus flower,

as it ever has been.

My Sister Screamed Underwater

My sister screamed underwater

once, years ago.

We were taking swimming lessons and

I remember the scene as if it were a still-life, maybe

or a painting by Andrew Wyeth,

though my sister’s name was

Helen,

not Christina.

The painting I remember is done in

the baked-out colours of august, where

anything young or green is looking pretty tired.

Helen/Christina was tired.

A girl among boys, she became rough-

house. We made her bait our fish hooks

‘cause she was tougher and no worm ever

bothered her. Myself? I couldn’t stand the

things.

Helen/Christina was tough but she suffered.

Ear infections that were

‘cured’

by allowing each drum to burst,

relieving pressure,

dulled her hearing. Baked it out,

as it it were the colour of August.

The day I am remembering,

Helen/Christina was following instructions.

She was learning to swim, she was getting familiar

with the water, she held her breath, she crossed

her legs and sat on the lake bottom.

The water must have felt ferocious

when it closed over her raw ears.

She screamed.

The teacher yanked her up, out of the water,

fearing a drowning.

It was too late.

Helen/Christina had already drowned,

we didn’t know that yet.

Might Have Been Somebody

One of the big boats

is moving, about to disappear,

existing not much longer at

the aged horizon.

You cannot see from here,

but must imagine there is a

whirling radar, observing,

set atop her steel wheelhouse tower.

On his solitary round, 

a deck-hand will be making certain

every ore-hatch is battened down,

lest the wind come up.

I am sure, witness to a vague shape,

this is that certain thousand-footer,

with all its bells and whistles.

The one.

Amazing, isn’t it?

how something majestic

could float away so fast?

I reach out, but

one more distracted turn of my head

and the whole of it will have

passed.

January 15, 2025

Dear goodness. I can spend the entire day doing little of consequence and yet…. the moment my head hits the bamboo fibre pillowcase, I fill my ‘trying to empty’ reservoir with a series of brilliant things to say. The words flow. The ideas shine. Yes, Yes…

I started the process of falling asleep a few minutes ago. It was interrupted by reminding myself what a fraud I am regarding the arts, the fine arts. It starts with the fact I don’t often have much a clue what the great filmmakers are saying. I watch Ingmar Bergman and stifle a laugh, his characters are so pregnant with meaning as to be comical, to me. I don’t bother to study the film, I just snicker. For example: one film stays in my mind that I don’t remember the title of. An old woman is getting kinda preachy with the young folks. Then, the young girl goes to milk the cow, trips and spills the milk. The music swells and it is obvious that this is important to the story. Yeah. I never bothered to learn what it meant. I still liked the film though, even as pretentious and overbearing as it was. I don’t know why Bergman is so revered but I kinda like the films. Makes me feel like I am cheating when I watch them, though. I can almost hear the film school professors clucking their tongues.

Books? Visual art? Poems? I have always preferred to read the books I knew to be substantial, to view the art I heard was substantial, to read poems that were… more interesting. Do I have the necessary education or pinpoint clear view to understand the core of what is being said by my favourite art-makers? No, I am sorry. I have tried to analyze but it just puts me to sleep. I am sorry Pablo Neruda. All that bloody work to assemble something magnificent for the world and that guy, Bob, reads it, eating popcorn and puzzling over some of the images, straining to understand, giving up and just reading – feeling the rhythm but not able to accurately count it out, sensing there is meaning very near but enjoying the sensation, then leaving it at that.

I have wasted the time of many great artists. Hemingway, Faulkner, Irving, Atwood, Longfellow, Wordsworth…oddly, or not, I kinda understand Chaucer. He seems easy to know. Alexander Pope, less so. Edmund Spencer? fugedaboutit. He is a wacky guy and the stuff is hard to read through the language barriers. The Faerie Queene? Really? And, how dare I suggest it but, Shakespeare is more than a little boring. I guess he needs to get with the times that Bob Hubbard is living in? In the case of dear old Will, I do know at least in part why he is so remarkable. His plays run the entire gamut of human-ness. We cheat, we lie, we try to take power over others, we get naughty in the bedroom, we misdirect, we violate every one of the ten commandments. The plays cover just about all of that and in succinct form. However, they can be a bit wearisome to suffer through. This year, I saw a cool Macbeth. The Danish court sycophants were a motorcycle gang, living in a motel…not everyone’s cup of tea but I liked it.

There have been highlights in my not-so-lustrous career as critic. I really liked the piece of modern art called “Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley” by Charles Ray. It is a sculpture of some ten different life size nudes of the artist, all gathered together in various sexual positions. Why is it art? I would have to think awhile. Why do I enjoy it so much? Again, it is something ‘other’ than the Virgin Mary, something ‘other’ than a Rodin sculpture. When I first saw the piece, it was Chicago at the Contemporary Art Museum. The most interesting part was to watch the tourists (everyone in a museum is at least a kind of tourist) and their reaction. My ex and I sat outside the gallery on a bench and looked in. The men would be walking around the sculpture with their wives or girlfriends. The women were chattering excitedly and pointing while the men attempted to look away. I am almost certain that was the intent of the artist and the why it is art but maybe the bespectacled crowd would differ?

I actually learned a little something about sculpture by submitting a study paper of Henry Moore. In my study, I wondered aloud why this lump of plaster (it was a test piece) was considered great art. My art teacher gave me back a lengthy explication of sculpture, how it works and why it is, of shadow, of form, of suggestion. He was very excited by my remarks and I adored reading his evaluation, explication. I also got a good mark on my study and very good marks in the class. It was a general humanities class and I aced it… not because I had special knowledge or insight but solely because I was familiar with almost every piece, music, visual or otherwise. I had, at least, looked at or listened to it. I was curious, even though unaware. That gave me an edge, but I knew my opinions were somewhat fraudulent.

Sigh.

I still love a freakish movie (non-violent, just weird), a goofy jazz piece, like ‘Steppin’ by the World Saxophone Quartet…Mary Oliver poems and Walt Whitman poems, little ol’ me, who just wants to hear pop music and look at strange books or movies but doesn’t like vacuous, brainless, unmusical Beyonce’ pop…like (danger Bob, danger) The Tragically Hip. Nickelback are better…..

January 12, 2026

I am never certain if you should be talking to ‘someone else’ when making a journal entry or to yourself. To be sure, the someone you are writing to or about or for IS someone else. While I am talking to me, I am also talking to that other fellow. Odd sensation, isn’t it? I can see, as time passes that I should have paid more attention in school. This very situation was covered, as I remember now, at various times. Listening in class means I wouldn’t have to ponder over a sudden revelation about Ego or Id at the near-death age of 75. I would have known this for the last 50 or 60 years. So, you see? Having education, knowledge is a good thing, even if only as a time-saver. You don’t have to make your own discoveries about the Id or the Ego if you learned this stuff in school. It takes less brain-power and less time to just let teachers teach, so that you will know stuff and not have to stop everything you are doing, at some much later date, to ‘discover’ the obvious or what has been long understood by others. Ha. Of course, having learned things in school or paying attention to warning signs or making a mental note not to do what you witnessed your now-deceased friend do…all make life less interesting. I could even venture that I learned what lessons I did learn even better with first-hand experience of what Mom was warning me not to do. I did it and I learned why she warned me. On we go.

Not much news in the neighbourhood today. No one is out and about. There was a minor kerfuffle a couple days ago, as I realized that the pavement no longer protects our water shut-off valves. The laneway is more narrow now. Folks have been driving off the pavement, through the mud and nearly breaking the water pipes below. I called the city in fear that there may be unseen leaking. That is when I discovered that, even though the city controls the water shut-off valve, it is considered a private water line and any damage to it is my responsibility. ‘Gosh, that don’t seem fair.’ I quickly borrowed one of the construction company’s striped barrels and plopped it down over my/the city’s valve. Nossir! Nobody is driving over my water main!

I took down the Christmas lights that were put up against my better judgment, my Grinch-like judgment. I noticed, when I was outside, that some birds were huddling in my little trees. They looked fat, so I guess their feathers were pumped up against the cold. Maybe they really were fat? I know that I am. Fat. I am so fat that I was able to bring in the lights while wearing only a light shirt. I was pumped up, like the birds? I am now, very, very nearly twice the weight I was when I left High school. Can you believe it? I will keep in my defence that I am also 4 times the age I was when I left high school. I guess that means, I picked up some baggage on the way. Next time I go outside, the little birds will be scrambling to get underneath my overhang to get warm. We will be pals. Ha.