From [email protected] Tue Jul 7 09:20:08 CDT 1998
Article: 312396 of rec.music.beatles
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From: [email protected] (saki)
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles
Subject: Hello Goodbye
Date: 7 Jul 1998 06:16:59 GMT
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"This happened once before."



It's happened lots of times. More than I can count. The demise of common courtesy; the disappearance of polite discourse; imminent death of the Net.

Codswallop.

I never believed it, not even when I recognized that my compatriots knew whereof they spoke.

I don't believe it now, even as I recognize that it's true.



"I'm not what I appear to be".



Not even now. I've been told, sincerely, by email, by someone whose words and encouragement I respect and revere and take *very seriously* that I hold the key---me! I'm told that my Technicolor appearance and a click of my rubied heels can send us all back to Kansas, where---one necessarily gathers---what we seek we never lost to begin with.

If we never lost it, why can't we find it now?

It strikes me that this is not home; this is no longer Kansas. Maybe we walked out the door and didn't even know we left the key behind us when the storm bore down upon us.

Perhaps we don't even need to go back! Perhaps there's some other venue for us?

Even the big boys moved from Liverpool (however much their hearts remained there) to London and beyond.

We love the sacred streets of our fair home port, the paths that led us from our cyber-birthplace to the boulevards where we vault toward Internet bounty. Some of us return to the old homestead for a forage of nostalgia's harvest. But eventually we explore what it means to move on.

If we don't, we might well be buried by those who fail to comprehend what once grew here. It was a garden of wonder, resplendent with some of the finest horticulturists of Beatles scholarship, who put forth their ideas and theories freely and Fabologically. We've had almost eleven years of it. Not a bad run.

Speaking for myself, I met some of my best friends here, many only by mail; some for real, not just virtually, at Beatles gatherings and sacred havens around the globe. I met the kind lady who became my matchmaker. I met the gentleman I plan to marry, if he'll have me. Nothing can take that away.



"Oh dear, what can I do?"



I don't rightly know. I see things; what I don't see, I hear about from others who believe that I have some power to stop it: flames, trolls, vituperation and vitriol in the one newsgroup that used to be immune to it. For years I've believed that treating your nemesis with respect is the only solution. I still believe that. But when the purpose of scholarly passion gets derailed into perpetual netiquette wars, or worse, are we on the right track?

Not that all the oldsters were perfect. Far from it. But their passion was spent primarily on arguments about mono and stereo, stereo and sessions, sessions and studios, studios and sounds, sounds and words, words and music, music and meaning. Ideas were thrown in hot Usenet wars, but rare was the circumstance in days of yore when rmb'ers battered the bastion of basic respect.

If they ever dared to do so, they'd hear from me. :-)

What's changed so radically?

Perhaps the fact that rmb now harbors those who don't know our history, who never try to see the faces of those with whom they debate---whose strategies are, in fact, to evade the gaze of those they face. This leads me to suspect that we've reached a cyber-turning-point of sorts. It's unfortunate because I can see there's still a slim majority of folks who seem to be in despair at our devolution. But despair alone may not be enough.

You don't have to suffer this ennui on your own. You can fight it. I'd be glad it you would. But I'm not sure it's right for me anymore, in this forum. I don't hold any magical solution for doing this better than anyone else, despite popular opinion to the contrary.

You'll pardon me, I hope, for feeling weary. Everybody's had a hard year.



"It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it".



That's the real key, the only one we need. I don't know why, sometimes, we bother with these dim words. The music is so vibrant. It opens our ears and eyes. It says everything that needs to be said.

Yet somehow we need to say more.

I always tried to see our commentary as something holy, a celebration herein presented by acolytes to the four masters of pop, the hymn of those who love something wildly, passionately, but can neither sing nor play in the same realm of the universe as the men who created this art.

In the great chain of being our words in rmb may not amount to much. But I like to think that words sincerely written, offered up to musical providence, may light the way for those who have yet to open their eyes to the wonder of the Fabs. They may even open the eyes of those who thought they knew it all. :-)

I could be wrong, of course. Maybe science is right. Maybe chaos is our destiny.



"And now the time has come".



I sense that it has---some point at which we make decisions about what we know, how much we have a right to know; whether we hurt those whom we admire in the pursuit of our knowledge about them. Have we turned round the wrong end of the telescope?

But of course, we also changed their lives, as they changed ours. Our clamor for them, our mania, had an impact on them, as much as they had on us. In a sense they made us as we made them, mutual sculptors all. We've become a limited company.

Perchance the reason we can't make sense here these days is that we depend too much on mere words alone, ours---and not enough on the words and music of the melodic manna we're meant to consume. This is our sustenance. Here is our most vital nourishment. Why do we feed on the Devil's radio instead?



"You made my dream."



I admit it. They did. I'll admit it anytime, anywhere. Some unfurnished room of my psyche was being fashioned in the early part of the sixties, and they hung it with the fabric of my future. I suppose I would have found a way to write about them till I die, as floridly as possible, even if rmb had never been born. But I'm grateful to rmb for being here. This newsgroup made things easy for me...perhaps too easy!

But if I couldn't write, I might have to talk about it. If I couldn't talk, I'd have to play their records over and over and show what a legacy they left me. Of course I do that anyway. :-)

I bet this is the same legacy they've left to you.

So what confuses me about the state of rmb is this: if you can't hear this legacy, what are you doing here in this hallowed newsgroup, wasting your time, when there are other pranks and trolls to perform in cyber-havens far afield where, for your efforts, you will be far more celebrated?

If you *can* hear it, why do you focus on anything else but the subject of this love? This was their message. It's what really matters.

And if you're locked into a debate with your compatriot that has passed the bounds of politeness and has transgressed the borders toward impropriety, don't tell me that he (or she) started "it" first, whatever argument constitutes "it"; I get this from my kids when they start to punch each other. It's not a valid explanation from them, and it doesn't hold water here, either.

Here's the crux of my puzzlement: with energy in such precious supply, how can you spend it fussing and fighting with your neighbor about the constructs of his personality and upbringing when there's sublime music and history to be heard and discussed? And if you don't like the music or the men who made it, why drown it out with such off-topic ad-hominem vehemence?



"Bye bye, baby, bye-bye".



Who are we leaving behind, if we leave? Some part of ourselves? Those who fail to see---the wicked children? Those who cannot ask? Those who are so wise they know better than I do what treasures remain to be seen in these esteemed environs?

There's always a danger in turning our back on our past, and what made us what we are.

There is also the chance that we'll grow by turning away.

It's one of life's great tragedies that we don't know which way to turn.



"Always on my mind".



I can write or not write about the Beatles, but their beat never stops. Their music has replaced my heart, my blood, my breath. These men are kin---my parents, my children. One can learn from them. One can learn to love by their gift to us.

One can be proud, distraught, amazed, enthralled at what these men pursued---popular art, religion, commerce, grief, privacy/publicity. Soon it all becomes a searing meld. In your fingerprints you will see their lyrics. On your soul you will read their song. You can't go back to the way it was before them.

I wouldn't want to go anywhere if they weren't there.



"Let me hear the words I long to hear".



Words of love? Heading for the light? Did I ever open up my heart and let you look inside? Strange days indeed?

How do you sleep? Tears cried for no one? Not guilty?

You have a plethora of choices. And I do mean *you*.



"How come you say you will when you won't?"



It's easy to have good intentions and then it all breaks down in this crazy world where anything can happen.

There are so many tales about the Internet that it's almost no surprise that we're at each other's throats, no matter who we pretend to be behind our screen name. Identity shifts. You will be good; then you won't. First there is a mountain, then their is no mountain.

Something gets under your skin. Some insult cannot be let alone. Some challenge requires a duel. Someone threatens a mailbomb, spam, physical injury; suddenly your name is rent asunder, your reputation in tatters, shattered.

All because of some fellas from Merseyside you came here to celebrate.

Is that what you want?



"There is one things I'm sure of".



And of course I am. One has to latch onto *some*thing. It's the word. Too bad we can't apply it in real life to those who type beside us, to those we would embrace if only we would see into their hearts.



"I played it far too long".



Maybe I did. It's awfully hard to know. And we can't always see our boundaries. Some of us love the party so much we stay long past our welcome. Yet there's this cosmic pull, an attraction that binds us here, whether we can figure out its secret or not, whether we have anything valuable to say anymore or not.

If I had the answer to this, I wouldn't be so confused about whether I belonged here today.



"Would it be too much to ask of you what you're doing?"



It's worth a modicum of consideration.



"Woke up last night, half past four".



Maybe that's the time the answer will be found. :-) In any case, I know that there's always another forum for me; there's a place. It's not exactly my ideal. I prefer the free expression and open doors of the newsgroup that first gave me space to breathe forth my Beatlemaniac ideas some eleven years ago, where I met like-minded fanatics and spent more time than was probably good for me exploring what the Beatles meant to me and to you.

I don't really want to leave, but if I'm to preserve my cyber-sanity, I may have to do so, for now. Perhaps some solution will present itself, and we can all be saved. Perhaps some tremendous vision will come to us, and the man on the flaming pie will open his mouth and tell us the answer.

I don't think it's as simple as "You are Beatles with an 'A'." That kind of tender, poetic surrealism comes only once in a lifetime. Maybe rmb has run its course. Maybe the man has no answer for us this time.

But I'll keep my ears and heart open, in case he has something something perspicacious to whisper to us all.

In the meantime, perhaps we'll meet again on the avenue.

--
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"Call it peace or call it treason, call it love or call it reason."
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