A CHAOTIC contemplation of THE BEATLES’ “A DAY IN THE LIFE”

I have placed the WARNING on the cover image because I want to point out that I highly debated whether to be “turned on” or completely clearheaded whilst listening and further investigating this “song”… If “it” can even be named by this mundane conglomeration of letters [S-O-N-G]. Perhaps voluntarily playing the role of a teetotaler was a mistake? Or, maybe, a great revelation? Like the “song”, the words I swiftly type into this sad hi-tech excuse for a piece of paper are essentially a bunch of lines drawn on a canvas where you can’t quite tell where they’re going or how they started, yet you know they’re there because, well, you see them.

In other news, I have a bright tangerine car. It was my great-grandmother’s creamy gold Mercury Montego before I baptized it in orange funk and named it Larry. When my friends complain about the fact that Larry doesn’t have a Bluetooth setting, Larry questions whether he has to see a dentist or not. Larry only knows of his ability to play the radio or swallow CDs. If Larry, like Spotify, had a “Top-Played Artist”, it would certainly be The Beatles. I tell you all this seemingly useless information because driving through the pavemented craters that are the roads of Puerto Rico, I can tell you that Larry and I have listened to “A Day in the Life” at considerable amount of red lights.  Never once, until now, had I heard the ending of this “song”, or even conceptualized that this offbeat mystifying raucous I heard once in a while coming from my car’s speakers wasn’t due to Larry’s old age, but rather a vital part of this S-O-N-G. It’s an abstract cacophony that perfectly sums up the mystical voyage that is “A Day in the Life.” Now my mind brings me to this… Why “A Day in the Life” instead of “A Day in Life?” What is this so-called “life”, why does it need a “the” before the noun? Who is he, she, they, or it? I wish all four of them could soothingly whisper an answer into my naïve ears in the same time and space. Maybe you have a thought or hold the key to some intrinsic knowledge? It weirdly troubles me, and perhaps it may begin to haunt my sleeping patterns.

Turning the page, Salvador Dalí once said, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” In some mystifying manner, as I listen to this SoOOnG, I feel as though J, P, G & R are taking me on a wild train ride that is, without the use of any sort illegal substance, making my aura go off the rails. Can you fathom the idea that a melody with some words coming out of multiple moving lips can ignite YOU in the same way when you ignite some Mary Jane? I don’t know exactly how I would react to this song with a lighter and joint in hand, yet I can sincerely say that through the trajectory of this S_O_NG I shifted into a somewhat altered state of being. Perchance it wasn’t an “altered state” per say, yet I can attest that the symphonic mayhem that traveled through my restless corpse as I carefully listened to this SonG created some very explicit physical effects. First stanza: The Dreary Mundane Monotony. However, as soon as the aural whirlwind makes its way into the song, the symptoms emerge from their inertia. Buzzing bees rapidly swing from one side to the other tickling my cerebrum. A needle or thousands of them are performing a tap number along the back of my neck all the way through my lower spine. Breath. Gets. Deeper. And. Fuller. As. If. In. A. State. Of. Vivacious. Unconsciousness. Be that as it may, I can’t help to notice how fake the second stanza feels. Is this the high? An explosion of euphoric happiness, yet ultimately rooted in something as artificial as Kool Aid? My thoughts were muddled at first, but then the third stanza came. It was similar to the first, yet with an evident underlying air of mystique. You, your persona, your mind, is never the same after doing some type of drug. Whether it be a concrete substance or an abstract feeling like love, we experience things and those things change us. Regardless if it’s for the better, or for the worse, we are never the same. Life is absurd. Absurdity is life. It is once the words begin to transform into a dulcet dissonance after the third stanza, that we are going through the rabbit hole like Alice. However, as that long piano chord shows us, there time here is indefinite. No humanized rabbit, no clock, just the ability to be one with the sound and nothing else. It’s almost an invitation for your soul to escape the carnal walls of the dermal outline…and just when you think time is actually about to run out, we arrive. Once the almost inaudible void because a pinching sound that seems as if only dogs were meant to hear, we step foot into our very own celestial wonderland. It sounds to me like a Jack in the Box repeatedly saying “Never to see any other way”… creepy, yet utterly divine to the point of finger licking. Once we enter the realm, we can psychically refrain from being there, yet never mentally. NEVER TO SEE ANY OTHER WAY! NeVEr TO See AnY OTheR Way! NEVER TO SEE ANY OTHER WAY… Maybe you hear it differently. It’d be interesting to see what everyone hears.  What I gather from this SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG is how our individual voyages toward transcendence are ultimately quite similar, or under the same purple umbrella, at least. Something along those lines.

Then, it makes me question… is sheer isolation the only way we reach this kaleidoscopic perception of the life?