Lennon, don't raise your head

I read in ARA a very good interview by David Miró with a politician who, without me agreeing with him at all, I find brilliant. Alejandro Fernández, a man who I think loves music and cooking. Talking about the frigate that Pedro Sánchez has sent to Cyprus, he says: “It doesn’t matter, John Lennon isn’t there singing Imagine

with a guitar. It’s a war frigate with weaponry. If the PP had done this, they would say that the government is participating in the war. Therefore, I’m sorry, but no demagoguery.”

Fernández knows very well what example he is setting. John Lennon is an artist who died a long time ago; therefore, citing him doesn’t directly offend anyone. He wouldn’t have cited any of the singers who could, if necessary, go sing a pacifist song at a protest against the war, because it could turn out as badly for him as it did for Trump with Springsteen. That’s too much risk. But anyway, for him to elevate John Lennon, who has been dead and buried for decades, to the category of a ridiculous anecdote seems improper of him. Of someone who values music; therefore, Lennon’s music too.

Surely the ex-Beatle was being woke or hippy or naive. Surely the lyrics of Imagine are naive, but no more so than any other lyrics, whether they talk about love or war. Music has always moved consciences. Those who move their bodies to dance are less willing to give their lives, or take them, for an abstract or concrete cause, like this war, which nobody quite remembers how it started, only why, and which we all know how it will end. There are times when the only thing we have left is to be demagogic and childish. Protesting is childish, yes, and that doesn’t prevent it from being necessary sometimes. It’s a shame that Lennon is now a little joke for the boomer generation like me, who were in their first year of BUP when he died, and we were so sad, because he was the author of Imagine

.