Strawberry Fields

There is not a lot more to say about the Strawberry Fields segment as it is quite self-explanatory.

In  Rumsfeld HAL's speak we have several Known Knowns here concerning John composing the song while filming How I Won the War.  We know the film could have been an episode of the Goon Show or Monty Python as it was done in the same manner, with John being a great fan of such satire, meaning the film was a general rant on the circus that is the American Forces, a la Bungalow Bill, but using English Army, a la Dad's Army or Goon Show as the brunt of all the jokes.

And knowing John likes to make a statement by saying the opposite [eg The Fat Growth on Eric Hearble], I think we can assume that in Day in the life:

I saw a film today oh, boy
The English army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away

is to be read as

I saw a film today oh, boy
The American army had just lost the war
A crowd of people came to spit

that is, forecasting the Napalm Girl Fraud, to which I will return with Prudence in deep cover.  This verse is brilliant in my view

Always, no sometimes, think it's me  
But you know I know when it's a dream  
I think I know I mean a yes  
But it's all wrong  
That is I think I disagree

Taybor interprets this as "think it's me" means "my turn to die" so shows bloke in front of Max get zapped while Max keeps expecting what actually happens to John in his movie, with his little monologue into the camera, so that works perfectly by way of juxtapositioning.

But I think we all know John is saying he sometimes thinks it is he [as the odd man out] who is out of his tree for actually thinking and not taking the easy way out of "living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see [on purpose]", ie the basic reason HAL can do Vietnam etc [forever] being that J Doe WILL never think, as Hitler HAL worked out some years before and USA HAL copied.

He had already decided "no one I think is in my tree" but keeps having doubts about why nobody can "you know, tune in" to his level in the tree, ie until Yoko everyone was either high or low, inter alia explaining why he kept getting further away from Paul, who is a far more "simple soul", as evidenced by his own song on flip side [or was it A Side?] Penny Lane.

So in Across the Universe, Jude ends up with the same "communication breakdown" with Lucy, who is trying to think but still tripping over her own feet, so at that point "She's Leaving Home", instead of "a Love that Should have Lasted Years", to add 2 more Beatles songs.

But in closing there are far too many words pronounced as "know" in the verse above, from where I sit, to be a coincidence.  The famous rant of Rumsfeld/Bush HAL to start Iraq War was:

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.

— United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

Now before you say that I am out of my tree to suggest John was that brilliant in forecasting HAL's dribble, it was not HAL that wrote it, but rather a 13th Century poet and the Copywrong had perspired [if I may attempt some Lennon writty].  It went:

* One who knows and knows that he knows... His horse of wisdom will reach the skies.
* One who knows, but doesn't know that he knows... He is fast asleep, so you should wake him up!
* One who doesn't know, but knows that he doesn't know... His limping mule will eventually get him home.
* One who doesn't know and doesn't know that he doesn't know... He will be eternally lost in his hopeless oblivion!

So John could easily have known that, in which case he and Henry the Horse are off for the skies while Donald and George are heading to get eternally lost in hopeless oblivion, though most non Americans would say that is nothing new.

Ah, one more.  Taymor shows the TRUE version in strawberry red of how the millions of kiddies are incinerated under HAL's orders by high level Hail Bombs, then we see her brilliant transition from swirling red bits of kiddies to a swirling WHITE sheet being carefully LAUNDERED to wash all the blood off HAL's hands, and the fact poor Lucy is still too green to notice, and is taken in by Megaphone Diplomacy.

We will soon see how this lie causes Max to be "fucked in the head" as Lucy is telling her mum, as she starts to see her own folly in joining the Tweedle Dee-Tweedle Dumb mob with Paco.

And yeah - I have added Strawberry Fields as #22 on my Kilgore Jukebox, but here it is as a single: