Wasted Away

I just found this song demo the other day, hiding away in a dusty old corner of my iTunes library while searching for something else entirely. It's a song called Wasted Away that I wrote more than ten years ago around the 20th anniversary of John's sad and tragic passing. I realized when I found this just now that it was early December, which reminded me that all of a sudden here we are remembering him again on now the 30th anniversary of his death. So I thought I would share this with the world today. It's unfinished and unpolished but the sentiment is in the right place. It's how I felt then. It's how I feel now. What a waste of a beautiful human being and an amazing talent.

What can you say that hasn't already been said before about John Lennon? Not much really. 

Except to say that the more time that passes, the more I see the power and the grace in his music and how his message still holds up today; maybe now more than ever in the face of our attention deficit, soul starved culture.  How John's music resonates through time and space to remind us what it means to truly believe in something and have the courage to stand up and shout it out to the world. 

I never really bought into the whole religious devotion to John that you run across so often when the subject of the man or his music comes up. But walk into Strawberry Fields in Central Park on any given day. Observe the believers, the dreamers sitting there in quiet reflection or educating a passing tourist about some aspect of his life or strumming a song or posing in front of the very well known Imagine mosaic, the very one I chose to recreate on my own doorstep. Hey, there are definitely some Spinal Tap moments there for sure with the odd band from Kalamazoo or Birmingham camped out on a park bench in the shadow of the Dakota trying to pick up on any spiritual residue that may still be floating around this hallowed ground.

But it's not hard to see in the daily rituals that play out here what John was getting at when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. If this isn't the definition of a spiritual place of devotion, a church, a temple, I don't know what is. And if I could ascribe any divine attributes at all to John Lennon it would be only in the way his music forever reminds me of the limitless possibility we each possess as human beings to make a real difference in the world with our own unique voice.

It's easy. All you need is love... 

Here's to you, John. 

Peace,

Mark Hermann

Feel free to download this song as a small token of my appreciation for the love and music John Lennon has given to the world. Share it with anyone you think would appreciate it.