I had just turned fifteen the month before John and Yoko married. I was too young to intellectually appreciate the deeper reasons behind many of their artistic and political efforts; but on an emotional and intuitive level I was endlessly energized by everything about them and their world. Viet Nam had long been ugly and controversial and the Nixon administration was just beginning its reign of paranoia. And the United States, in fact, the world, and the youth culture were on the cusp of change.

Between the psychedelic rock groups and the bursting rock scene of young songwriters who proliferated a peace movement through antiwar and social songs, written and delivered in an endless stream of poignant and powerful performances, music and the antiwar movement had more influence on me than television, school, my friends or my parents. For this fifteen year old, 1969 was both an awakening and revolution.

Everyone knew that Paul and John each took a wife. While it was John and Yoko who captivated me: mind and soul, Paul and Linda had my respect. I think they made a lovely couple. But it was my first hearing of Give Peace A Chance that transformed me into a new animal. The first time I heard it I was sitting in the back seat of my parents' car. It came over the radio and blasted me into another world. It had an intoxicating, electrifying energy, unlike anything I had heard before.

The energy and significance of the Bed-In and the magic and turbulence of the peace movement and Give Peace A Chance stayed with me in the same way as that live performance I saw of Hey Jude one day on television; where a crowd of young people clustered around a piano as the four boys from Liverpool electrified everyone on and off stage, in what became a moment infinitely larger than any of these four young men could have dreamed.

Something was happening. Something very big and magnetic was in the air. An euphoria was igniting through the youth of America and the world, vibrating through myriad air waves and brain waves crisscrossing the globe.

When I saw the video of the Bed-In, with John and Yoko and Kyoko and a who's who of 60's icons gathered in a crowded hotel room chanting and singing Give Peace A Chance, I was envious of those who took part in this magnificent event. But at fifteen I didn't realize the horrors and politics that provoked two people to do this Bed-In in the first place. I just saw the magic of the moment. I was dazzled and turned-on to the positive side of what was in reality: genocide and the ugly, dark side of espionage, power and paranoia.

The events of today ring of a not so distant yesteryear, as we occupy Iraq, and the Bush administration divides the United States (and much of the world) with the most perverse kind of patriotism, a patriotism contrived on a single horrific event (9-11) that has allowed this President to justify, rally and unleash his full vengeance against a people to avenge his father's mistakes, to gain strategic land and oil, and benefit his corporate cronies and political backers who pledged big bucks to ensure his presidency and their personal agendas and power base of influence.

As Gandhi said "An eye for an eye will make us all blind." And we have become as blind and murderous as the terrorists who attacked us on 9-11. Blind patriotism is the result of feverish nationalism and fundamentalism. It is this same blindness that torpedoed the World Trade Center on 9-11. It justified Hitler, Stalin, Pearl Harbor, and Hiroshima. If you want to control the minds of the masses paralyze them in fear, make them hopeless with unemployment and hunger, infuse them with patriotism and religion.

The events of today almost mirror the tensions that precipitated Give Peace A Chance and John and Yoko's Bed-In. Go back forty years, and the very tensions that are simmering within American today, were simmering and sizzling in the mid 1960's. The heat was being turned higher and higher. The consequences were escalating and becoming mired in a rhetoric and paranoia that could only result in one disastrous, insane outcome.

Every action, every word, every tension eliminated the possibility of a peaceful resolution. It eliminated constructive dialogue and understanding. These kinds of ingredients can only create one end-result. For the necessary ingredients to achieve a peaceful coexistence, like any other recipe, are specific. Neither the Nixon administration in 1969 nor the George W. Bush administration today have exhibited any plan or vision or action that would indicate their desire for a respectful and peaceful coexistence.

So, does the Bed-In of 1969 fall into the fond annals of nostalgia and an era of hippies, drugs and rock and roll or does it pass the test of time? Is it relevant beyond its time and place? Like the lyrics to Lennon's song Imagine, Give Peace A Chance may, at first, sound terminally naïve and idealist, and to some extent it is and had to be, but dig a little deeper and listen a little closer and one begins to see how courageous and bold both these songs are.

One only needs to look back forty plus years at what originally sparked the antiwar songs and events of the 60's, and one is instantly stunned at the similarities and the parallel rhetoric and reasons supporting each war. Time marches on and the past forty years have changed our culture drastically, but human nature continues to evolve at a snail's pace. Our technological, intellectual, and scientific advancements dwarf Mankind's psychological and emotional evolution. We have more in common with our hairy, tree-climbing ancestors than most Moderns will ever dare or care to admit.

In the 90's Yoko produced three significant antiwar songs: Revelations (truly a biblical insight and writing); Rising (a sultry ballet of human dignity and and determination rising from the slop of human history); and Georgia Stone (a Fluxus symphony). It is Yoko's music that remains relevant to me as an adult In fact, when I'm working on a piece and need to tap into a particular energy, it is through Yoko's music, especially when playing one of these three pieces, that I find that tap root within.

We can call "peace" a movement but I see it as a personal understanding and responsibility that can only be accomplished and maintained from within. It sometimes needs a Viet Nam or an Iraq on a cataclysmic scale for Humankind to be awakened. But fundamentally it remains a personal relationship one has with oneself and the world one lives in on a day to day basis. It all boils down to the everyday: those small, simple things and interactions.

Perhaps a Bed-In would work today. It's hard to say. I think the message of peace would be better served if we simply followed the example set by those who quietly live in harmony and dignity with themselves and their neighbors. Peace is usually seen as a public event i.e. a demonstration. I
see peace as a daily, private affair that sometimes becomes public, such as in this "peace sharing." Those who steadfastly walk the talk are the true leaders and peacemakers.

The following poem, September 11, 2001, was written after 9-11. I modeled it after Lennon's Imagine. It is my response to the events on 9-11 and how I would have approached this horrific act. Mrs. Browning owes a debt to Yoko's Season Of Glass and Milk and Honey. I became enamored with EBB many years ago. Besides her sonnets to Robert, Elizabeth wrote some insightful antislavery pieces. My tribute to Yoko came fifteen years later.

Lastly, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, through combined and solo efforts, passed the torch to a new generation of socially and politically astute artists, poets, activists, intellectuals as well as to hundreds of thousands of everyday people who care enough to take responsibility for their actions and the world they live in. I've been influenced by a diverse group of thinkers and writers since I was that fifteen year old. But it was John and Yoko who first fired me up, and continue to inspire me as an adult.

If only a pinhead of wisdom could surface
amongst all the hype and noise
of current events

if only tragedy could reveal opportunity,
uniting people not against one
but, rather, for the humanity of all

if only ignorance and intolerance could give way
to diversity, understanding
and coexistence beneath the ash and carnage

if only the microscope we place others under
could reflect back the pitch black hollow
concealed behind everyman's face

if only a pinhead of wisdom could surface
amongst all the suffering and misunderstanding
and an internationalism of real dialogue begin

if only ethics and esthetics really mattered

if only…
human kindness, the songbird of beauty, the sunset of majesty, the kindness of strangers.

Mrs. Browning

Mistress of the Portuguese, cello in the wind,
poetess of such poetic prodigies
strung in heartstrings, the heroic heavens
of inner space shalom shalom
this outer world hung by infrared bands
sunshine strands that cling strange
to the soul
caught in the web of distant lands,

escaping through the drip
of ink and pen

the golden ring of your darkened den
where sonnets swell
like tears
to ease the pain
of
the bloody
hand.

Mrs. Lennon

Mistress of the avant-garde, Picasso Woman,
yellow slanted-eyed, multi-angled Dragon Lady
smashing your face straight into plate glass
through its charred, sapphire shards
grief-- fear-- rage--
fate's darkly misted clear reflected in her crystal sphere
revealing the importance of so many things
yet concealing the unforeseen
of wedding vows
and rings
exchanged
that nonrefundable sum of living
artist, woman, lover
yellow, slanted-eyed, multi-angled Picasso Lady
smashing your face straight into plate glass
through its golden loom of memory
irreversibly, irretrievably
rearranged.

Tom Lapins

© Wilhelm Gockner