John Lennon Exhibit at Grammy Museum | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I'm all set for this Saturday! 🙂

You know I spent two hours at home just so I could have a fully charged camera and…they didn't allow photos of any kind.

Pooh.

This exhibit is so cool. They had a number of videos playing, one of John and Yoko on the Dick Cavett show (where he actually brought up two people practicing Bagism — I couldn't stop laughing when I saw that) and one where Yoko accepts the Grammy that Doiuble Fantasy won in 1981. There was a separate area where the videos in the Power To The People collection were playing. The video to Happy XMas was really something — casualties of war and many of them children stuck in the middle of it. The video to Whatever Gets You Through the Night was really cool, too, all these animated pictures and things blowing around in the wind, though when his glasses fell and broke, that once again caused my heart to ache. There also was one video of him that got me really emotional, talking about his death and legacy, and I was thankful I could commiserate with a woman in her 50s or 60s about what a hole I was feeling right then, one that is John-shaped. We both were so sure he's have been a force of nature in this world, and we'd be living in different times. 

I'm not sure what exactly what it was but there was a video of Yoko stepping through a door with a number of different people (Dick Cavett and George were two, of course she did with John.) I kept laughing at the clip of George because he might as well be gritting his teeth as he says hello to Yoko the Cookie Monster. 😀 And I never noticed before that Yoko was knitting during Instant Karma . 

John called Woman a “grown up version of 'Girl.' ” I thought that was pretty cool. I thought it was remarkable that Imagine took shape on a tiny hotel stationery pad. It was so cool seeing his handwritten lyrics.I also learned that George played guitar in Gimme Some Truth .

They had a lot of memorabilia, albums that John liked growing up (Gene Vincent, Lonnie Donegan) some of his guitars, a replica of his Sgt. Pepper uniform and a collarless suit (not sure if that was a copy, too.)

One of the best things there, the best thing, is you go into another room where you see John working on Imagine , and to the left of the large screen are three long rows of string and a bunch of notecards also with string on them that all start with “Imagine a world where…” and the whole point of course was to pretty much state just what sort of world you would like to live in. (I think there's some power in writing out the things that you want, but that's neither here nor there.) Plenty of people wrote “…John Lennon was still alive,” and others drew pictures of John, one in his Sgt. Pepper uniform, one a really good drawing of the New York City photo, and one of the famous line drawing that is on “Imagine .” I liked the one who wished for a world where people started talking to each other again, and we weren't so dependent on instantly gratifying communication, which really has isolated so many of us. (Again, neither here nor there.) I know he's a fricking icon now, but it was really amazing to see how many lives he influenced as I read those cards.

I wrote “…where we finally realize that “god” is the same thing under many different names and we stop fighting over which one is right or best.”

All in all, it's such a brilliant exhibit. Such a bittersweet exhibit. I was at the museum for a good three or four hours. I saw the other floors, and the other exhibits but I was so hesitant to leave the Lennon exhibit like while I was there, he was still alive. I didn't really want to say goodbye.

So if any of you are in the Los Angeles area and want to check this out, know you have a museum buddy in waiting (that's me) if you'd like.