December 12, 2004

• PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ME OUT
  (See sidebar for others)
  

  JOHN LENNON and ANNIE LEIBOWITZ

  John Lennon was born in Liverpool in 1940 and raised by his aunt and uncle. We all know the story by now, how he met Paul McCartney and together they brought the Beatles to the world. We know he eventually met Yoko Ono and began to perform with her and on his own. We know that in 1979 he had a very bad year when she threw him out to get drugs, sex and other women out of his system and that in 1980 he returned to her, having kicked heroin cold turkey, and cut his final album Double Fantasy to critical acclaim. In 1949, Annie Leibowitz was born in Connecticut to an air force officer and modern dance instructor parents. A product of the San Francisco Art Institute, she got her big break in 1970 with a shot of Allen Ginsberg smoking dope on a peace march that she sold to Rolling Stone magazine for $25. Three years later she became the magazine’s chief photographer. Her expertise was celebrities, especially rock musicians. On the afternoon of December 8, 1980, she produced this famous shot of John and Yoko in their hotel room in New York City. By that evening Lennon would be dead. Today Annie Leibowitz works out of a converted garage on Manhattan’s West Side with as many as 30 assistants. In 1983, she left Rolling Stone for another trendy radical magazine, Vanity Fair, where she has been ever since turning out her very personal, stylized photos of famous people. John Lennon’s death was traumatizing to all of us who admired him for his outrageous, in-your-face activism and his incredible talent. On that afternoon in December 1980 Annie Leibowitz captured for us the essence of his capacity for love.
  (Other famous photos by Leibowitz)
  

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  Deep Thought: “I hope in the future Americans are thought of as a warlike, vicious people, because I bet a lot of high schools would pick “Americans” as their mascot.”
  Today I am grateful for: Italics
  Guess the Movie: “Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. If you don’t start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who’ll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. I’m not hearing any heart. Run the risk, if you get hurt, you’ll come back. Because, the truth is there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love – well, you haven’t lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.” Answer: Meet Joe Black, 1998.
  Guantánamo Torture and Humiliation Still Going On, Says Shackled Briton
  by Vikram Dodd and Clare Dyer
  Fresh allegations about a regime of torture and humiliation inflicted on detainees by their American captors at Guantánamo Bay have been made by a Briton still held there, according to Foreign Office documents seen by the Guardian.
  The claims by Martin Mubanga, from London, are the latest to surface from the prison where the US holds 550 Muslim men it claims are terrorists in conditions that have sparked worldwide condemnation. (Rest of article here.)
  (And why isn’t somebody with clout DOING something about this?!!)
  End of Day: 8:48 pm
  + = Wonderful quiet day, finished Chapter 8, now into editing.
  - = So behind on Xmas cards.

  • 10:40 am
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