Here at Dead Air Church, I'm in a fairly Freudian mood for Mothers Day and ready to agree with the futuristic drones in BRAVE NEW WORLD (as well as radical feminist Shulamith Firestone), that motherhood is a negative and anachronistic legacy of our backward primitivism, etc etc.
Then again, maybe not.
See, I can't make up my mind, as I sift through the many Mom videos on YouTube.
Runners up for this church service include Pink Floyd's Mother, especially this version set to images of nuclear destruction. I guess I ain't the only one with Freudian issues! (PS: Check out this stellar version by Sinead O'Connor, Roger Waters and the Band.) I couldn't find a decent version of Tracy Bonham's Mother, Mother, although truthfully, that one properly belongs to my daughter Delusional Precious and I won't encroach on her turf.
No, I decided to use the first Mother song I ever heard that completely took my breath away, that was in no way sentimental, but just tells the truth about how many children feel. John Lennon's mother, Julia, abandoned him for years; mine only left me behind for relatively short periods in comparison. But it hurt the same. My father totally abandoned me, as John's also did.
John was doing Primal Scream therapy at the time he wrote this song, so it devolves into several Primal Screams at the end. It bothered people a lot and they wondered if he had lost his mind. When asked, he said no, he was in the process of trying to find it. (He was always so witty.) I figure, you'll either get it or you won't. Strange person that I am, I've always loved the screams--they are perfectly integrated into this song and turn it into something... well, primal.
Several very nice Freudian touches in this video, which smartly features a juxtaposition of John's various mother and father substitutes in the Primal Scream finale--including Brian Epstein and Yoko Ono (should have included the Maharishi, but I guess that's quibbling). And then we see John with his own boys, Julian and Sean. He also abandoned Julian, imitating his own father. Julian was abandoned through the usual channels of divorce, relocation and remarriage--and we are sharply reminded that we often imitate our parents, like it or not.
And we realize all of us are abandoned by our parents, finally, by death. As little Sean was. As I have been. Some of you know the feeling.
Be kind to your momma today. Happy Mother's Day to everyone.
~*~
JOHN LENNON - MOTHER
[via FoxyTunes / John Lennon]
