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 | | | | Oct31Written by:Bill Park
Wednesday, October 31, 2001 6:00 PM  When we speak of art, and in particular the art of music, we are always relating to how the music has affected each of us on a personal level. Few musical artists have so broadly affected not just the music, but also the culture of the western world as the Beatles. That's an undeniable fact. Their impact on the recording world was equally strong. Love them or hate them, the face of pop music, how it is written and recorded, and how artists are treated, changed radically because of the Beatles and George Martin.
Many of you are too young to have been affected by Beatlemania. I happen to be just barely old enough to have experienced it. But this was not where the Beatles came to the forefront and made the changes that I spoke of above. That came later. At first, the Beatles were just a pop group. Another, of many others, they were disposable entertainment for the masses like any other here-today-gone-tomorrow pop group of the time.
But this is where fans are born and where young lives are affected. I wanted to look like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. He always wore the coolest clothes, played the coolest instruments, and stood apart from the rest of the Stones. But like so many other young men at the time, I really wanted to -be- John Lennon. In the superficial pop news coverage of the era John appeared to be the witty, extroverted artist, musician, and writer. Super cool and way out front. George was the gangly shy one who didn't talk much and tended to hide a bit behind his hair and fidget uncertainly between John and Paul on stage.
I was an artist, musician, and writer. And I tried to be John. But inside I knew that I was really much more like George, or what I thought that George was like at the time. I was the tall, lanky guy; a little bit shy and a tad uncertain of just where to stand and what to do.
Then the Beatles made a left turn. They broke away from the mold, and started experimenting. Instead of recreating their last hit record, instead of mounting larger and larger tours and watching the franchise grow and the bucks roll in, they became more and more withdrawn and eclectic. They were not worried about popularity any longer; they were concerned with where their creativity could take them. And that's when it happened. Because I went with them and made the journey of a lifetime, that will take my lifetime to complete. Because that is where I saw the convergence of art, music, creativity, popularity, and self-expression, and that is when I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I am still doing it.
And the major architect of that life-altering change was George Harrison, not Brian Jones or John Lennon. His journeys into creativity, his search for inner peace, his quiet confidence, his forays into international aid all became beacons for me. He showed me that I did not need to buy into the male strutting machismo bullshit fantasy that most men are raised to believe they have to act out if they want to become and be men. He showed me that the confusion of adolescence would become the confidence of adulthood if I would just follow the path that lay clearly before me. He showed me that the man inside was what was important, and he helped me to understand each individual man's place in the scheme of the universe and his responsibilities to that universe. Big lessons to have received from a man that I never met. Para chaina bhitara vaha alingana babta Ishvara. (My structure may be wrong, but the sentiment is honest.)
The Depth of the Surface
by Satyendra Srivastava
Into the icy
Cold quiet surface
Of the water
Slowly
Putting my palms and
Keeping them there
For a while
I realized suddenly
That surface
Has a depth too.
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