Saturday, March 08, 2008

Brainwave!
because, you know, Beatles songs are not easy to analyse-- you don't know if they wrote it when they were on LSD or if they really mean it, or both. Strawberry Fields Forever, taking it in the context of across the universe:


Let me take you down cause I'm going to strawberry fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry fields forever
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

I was trying to understand what the Beatles meant, because the symbolism of strawberry fields does not relate at all to the rest of the lyrics. The way Jude pins the strawberries makes me thing of minefields and military formation (lol like FD) but if it means that, than why does he say "forever"? Then I thought and thought and thought. I think slowly, but because it's 3am! I have a brilliant brainwave. Jude is escapist! Like me! The speaker likes to not have to think about the war going on, in this case the vietnam war, because he thinks "living is easy with eyes closed" like "ignorance is bliss". But then the war is always nagging at the side, so he can't completely escape, and he is irritated at this. Because he knows that he isn't supposed to shut everything out and pretend that it isn't happening, as a kind of punishment for escaping, "misunderstanding is all you see".
When I think of closing your eyes and seeing misunderstanding, I think of the imagery of opening your eyes and gaining enlightenment. Or in this context Living with your eyes open is paying attention to what is happening, and because you look at all this destruction, you have a human moral calling to change things, and this might be the "enlightenment" bit. But when you change things, you become political and this forces you to pick sides and take a stand, and the speaker doesn't seem to want to take a stand, because fighting against the war may render you as eager to gain power as your political opponent.
The speaker might also find that it's "getting hard to be someone" because his conscience is telling him to go to something about the war. He finds it hard to be someone with principles and beliefs when escapism is refuting all the values you're supposed to have. He might also feel that he doesn't have value as a person, to be "someone" when he isn't doing anything for the war; he is just sitting and pretending things aren't as serious as they really are, or that nothing is happening, i.e. being useless.

*reminds self to talk more about symbolism and imagery of strawberry*

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