Ringo Starr wants us all to come together tomorrow on his 71st birthday and think about peace and love.Why, Ringo? What's peace got to do with love? And what are the credentials of an ex-Beatle when it comes to recommending one or both to us? As we were discussing with Peter Doggett on this week's Word podcast, the Beatles fought for years, sometimes physically. There is no more graphic example of the difficulty of rising above one's baser human emotions and coming to a peaceable settlement than the story of the Beatles.
Since 1967 a huge swathe of the less reflective members of the rock'n'pop brethren (and sistren) have automatically prescribed peace and love as the cure for mankind's ills. If we were to perform a basic analysis of how much humanity has taken their advice we would be forced to concede that for some reason Ringo et al are not getting their message across. War and conflict have been the twin constants of man's time on earth. That's been just as much the case since Sgt Pepper as it was before.
Happy birthday, nonetheless.
"War and conflict have been the twin constants of man's time on earth."
ReplyDeleteYes, in differing locations, at differing times. But then again the same can be said of peace and love.
And surely one is worth coming together in the name of and one isn't.
Are you suggesting we give up on peace and love or just become so cynical as to deride others that still believe in it?
A few years ago my friend Tony said to me "You should write a song for Ringo called Peace And Love - it's his catch-phrase."
ReplyDeleteDespite the fact that I had no idea how to get a song to Ringo I started to write it just to prove I could do come up with something. However the song quickly went down the cynical route, and could make a neat companion-piece to David's blog post.
And, of course, even if I somehow got it to Ringo, there's no way in a million years he would sing it.
It's a free download here: http://dccardwell.com/track/peace-and-love