LENNON: AGAIN AMSTERDAM "BED-IN FOR PEACE"

The couple formed by the British singer John Lennon and his wife, the Japanese artist Yoko Ono, turned their honeymoon into a pacifist ceremony in March 1969, encouraging the world to “make love, not war”.

The photographs of this event became famous all over the world, but not all of them were made public, because unknown snaps taken by Dutch photographer Nico Koster, have just been found in Amsterdam.

Nico Koster is writing a book, which will be released in March 2009, because this date coincides with the fortieth anniversary of their marriage. This book will be called 902, because it is the number of the hotel room in Amsterdam, where the couple stayed for one week.

LENNON: "IMAGINE"

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream.

A dream you dream together is reality"

LENNON PACIFISTA. " IMAGINE ": un himno para la paz.

La figura poliédrica de Lennon fue mostrando al mundo cada una de sus poderosas caras a medida que el tiempo iba abriendo los surcos de ese enorme campo que es su biografía.

Como músico que soy, me gusta Lennon el pacifista, y como pacifista que también soy, me encanta Lennon el músico. MAX SEITZ, BBC MUNDO.

Imagine there's no Heaven

It's easy if you try

And no Hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there's no country

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

Maybe someday you will join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no posessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

Or Brotherhood of Man...

Biolennon

On his next album, Imagine (1971), Lennon felt confident enough to reintroduce some melodic elements reminiscent of the Beatles into his songs. Working again with Ono and Spector, he retains the eloquent plainspokenness of Plastic Ono Band, but allows textural elements such as strings, to create more of a sense of beauty. The album's title track alone ensured its historical importance; it is a call to idealism that has provided solace and inspiration at every moment of social and humanitarian crisis since it was written.

Biolennon

The minimalist sound of Plastic Ono Band was significant too. Lennon had come to associate the elaborate musical arrangements of much of the Beatles' later work with Paul McCartney and George Martin, and he consciously set out to purge those elements from his own work. Co-producing with Ono and the legendary Phil Spector, he built a sonic environment that could not have been more basic - guitar, bass, drums, the occasional piano -- whatever was essential and absolutely nothing more. Lyrically, he turned away from the psychedelic flights and Joycean wordplay of such songs as "I Am the Walrus" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" - as well as his books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works -- and toward a style in which unadorned, elemental speech gathered poetic force through its very directness.

Biolennon

And those traumas were considerable. Lennon's mother, Julia, drifted in and out of his life during his childhood in Liverpool - he was raised by Julia's sister Mimi and Mimi's husband, George - and then died in a car accident when Lennon was seventeen. His father was similarly absent, essentially walking out on the family when John was an infant. He disappeared for good when Lennon was five, only to return after his son had become famous as a member of the Beatles. Consequently, Lennon struggled with fears of abandonment his entire life. When he repeatedly cries, "Mama, don't go/Daddy come home," in "Mother," it's less a performance than a scarifying brand of therapeutic performance art. And in that regard, as well as many others, it revealed the influence of Yoko Ono, whom Lennon had married in 1969, leaving his first wife, Cynthia, and their son Julian in order to do so.

Biolennon

Such imagery, coupled with the tragedy of his murder in 1980, has often led to Lennon's being sentimentalized as a gentle prince of peace gazing off into the distance at an Eden only he could see. In fact, he was a far more complex and difficult person, which, in part, accounts for the world's endless fascination with him. Plastic Ono Band (1970), the first solo album he made after leaving the Beatles, alternates songs that are so emotionally raw that to this day they are difficult to listen to with songs of extraordinary beauty and simplicity. Gripped by his immersion in primal-scream therapy, which encouraged its practitioners to re-experience their most profound psychic injuries, Lennon sought in such songs as "Mother" and "God" to confront and strip away the traumas that had afflicted his life since childhood.

Biolennon

While But it was only after the breakup of the Beatles in 1970 that the figure the world now recognizes as "John Lennon" truly came into being. Whether he was engaging in social activism; giving long, passionate interviews that, once again, broadened the nature of public discourse for artists; defining a new life as a self-described "househusband;" or writing and recording songs, Lennon came to view his life as a work of art in which every act shimmered with potential meaning for the world at large. It was a Messianic attitude, to be sure, but one that was tempered by an innate inclusiveness and generosity. If he saw himself as larger than life, he also yearned for a world in which his ego managed at once to absorb everyone else and dissolve all differences among people, leaving a Zen-like tranquility and calm. "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one," he sang in "Imagine," which has become his best-known song and an international anthem of peace. "I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one."

biolennon

In the Beatles, Lennon displayed an outspokenness that immersed the band in controversy and helped redefine the rules of acceptable behavior for rock stars. He famously remarked in 1965 that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" - a statement that was more an observation than a boast, but that resulted in the band's records being burned and removed from radio station playlists in the U.S. He criticized America's involvement in Vietnam, and, as the Sixties progressed, he became an increasingly important symbol of the burgeoning counterculture.

Biolennon

If John Lennon had only been one of the four members of the Beatles, his artistic immortality would already have been assured. The so-called "smart Beatle," he brought a penetrating intelligence and a stinging wit both to the band's music and its self-presentation. But in such songs as "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," "Rain" and "In My Life," he also marshaled gorgeous melodies to evoke a sophisticated, dreamlike world-weariness well beyond his years. Such work suggested not merely a profound musical and literary sensibility - a genius, in short -- but a vision of life that was simultaneously reflective, utopian and poignantly realistic.

A República de Platón

1. As mulleres, cunha apropiada ascendencia xenética e unha educación apropiada, estarán igualmente capacitadas que os homes para gobernar a sociedade ideal.

2. A familia e a propiedade privada non terán importancia na vida dos gardiáns; os nenos serán criados por mulleres e homes en idade de criar, elixidos polas súas calidades intelectuais, morais e físicas, nun sistema de pseudo-sorteo que en realidade estará controlado por gardiáns de oficio.

3. Se é necesario, dirase unha «nobre mentira» aos diferentes sectores da sociedade, para convencerlles do apropiado dos seus lugares no gran esquema das cousas.

4. Unha drástica pre-censura das artes será parte da educación na Sociedade Ideal, para a educación tanto dos gardiáns como do pobo, en xeral. Calquera arte que subsista será só como un beneficio xeral para o estado e non para o propio ben, e estará caracterizado pola beleza da forma e a verdade dos seus contido.

5. Na Sociedade Ideal, un talento e só un será exercitado por cada individuo. Entre devanditos talentos está o de gobernar. Será o talento propio dos gardiáns.