All Things Must Pass

 

I had a keen appreciation for the Beatles in my high school and college days, collecting a handful of their albums on CD in the late 80’s before I made the regretful decision to sell them in my mid-20’s when I needed money.  A cash infusion was necessary at the time as someone subsisting on student loans and they brought top dollar at the used CD shops I frequented on Kirkwood Avenue.  

But not before I’d tried my hand at writing a short story called “The Glass Onion” inspired by their music.

I wasn’t one to use a pen or pencil much because my handwriting was so atrocious and I laboriously printed everything while eschewing the use of cursive.  My typing class as a sophomore in high school ended up being the most practical and long lasting of skills I picked up in those four years of teenager-hood.  When I came upon the idea for the story as a college freshman I utilized the computer lab at DePauw University to try and bring it to fruition.  The lab was provided for students to do class assignments in the pre-laptop era when the Macintosh had just been introduced and was revolutionizing personal computing with its magical “windows” functionality, though I could not afford such a beautiful machine.  Large PC’s were de rigeur at universities at the time and Apples were for artsy folks.

I had purchased a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk at the student bookstore on which to store my clandestinely-typed stories that I thought were going to just pour out of me and The Glass Onion was going to be the first.  It played out like a Twilight Zone episode with trippy overtones in homage to the songs of John Lennon like “I am the Walrus”, “Strawberry Fields, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and, of course, “Glass Onion”.  Because I was not an experienced writer I made all the amateur mistakes to include trying to edit and get it perfect as I wrote it which resulted in becoming hopelessly bogged down and giving up about half way through the story.

After that there were a few decades when my appreciation of the Beatles laid fallow for the most part.  In the past few years it has kicked up again in earnest, maybe stoked by the release of the Get Back documentary and its voluminous amount of filmed interactions of the Fab Four in studio.  When FB figured out I was interested (per its algorithms), forget about it.  I have been inundated with essays, musical snippets, and trivia about the boys on a daily basis to the point I feel like I have become a Beatles aficionado to some small degree.  Now when someone says “Did you know…” and tries to share some obscure Beatles trivia it is invariably the case that I’ve already read that thing online or possibly in a book.

And in this past week or two I have delved into George Harrison’s first post-Beatles break up album “All Things Must Pass”.  I have not really given George his due over the years but my appreciation for him has grown over time and now songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Something”, and “Here Comes the Sun” are some of my favorites in the Beatles catalogue.  On this particular album I have been drawn most to “All Things Must Pass”, “Isn’t It a Pity”, and “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let it Roll)”. 

Last week a photographer friend posted a stunning shot of a cloud reflecting in a pond with the top part glowing orangish yellow at the golden hour.  I like to take photos that intrigue me and manipulate them in various ways just for fun to see what I end up with.  This particular image I made a second copy of, flipped it, and then pushed them together to create a mirrored image.  A paint program exaggerated some of the colors and the final image had an Eastern psychedelic type feel to it which led me to think of George and his fascination with Indian culture and religion.  Thus was born “All Things Must Pass”, the album cover that never was.

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