Forum / If A Body

• 
  Matt Dennison

  Sep 14, 06:57pm

  I found this on the homepage of the magazine Hotel Amerika (Columbia College, Chicago) and wanted to share it. I don't think they would mind.

  if a body

  --Erin Lyndal Martin

  according to old paintings, people used to nest inside themselves.

  their bodies were perfectly hinged, and inside there’s another picture of the same person, only lighter, glowing.

  people were less afraid of death when they could imagine climbing up outside of themselves.

  imagine learning you were more beautiful than you thought. imagine thinking of your thighs as a clumsy trojan horse.

  artists used to dig up bodies so they could get all the anatomy right. sometimes they went to jail for it. the irony is not lost: disturbing an allegedly soulless corpse results in imprisonment of the living. I wonder how many artists died in prison and then were buried elsewhere. I wonder who dug up their bodies to paint.

  I wonder who invented surgery. imagine announcing to everyone you know that you’ve had a great idea, and that your great idea is to cut people open and mess around with their insides.

  sort of makes it funny to think how controversial the beatles were.

  john lennon did not die on impact. people think he did because it sounds more dramatic somehow. it makes them think of werewolf movies, where this big and mythic thing gets stopped suddenly with a perfect silver bullet.

  john lennon was not a werewolf. he was taken to the hospital and they performed emergency surgery on him. I don’t know all the details, but I know the doctor had to hold his heart for a while. here I imagine “all you need is love” playing in the operating room.

  here the story breaks down.

  he was supposedly still alive when they picked him off the pavement, but some people claim to have posed for pictures with his corpse. one man said he saw people move john lennon’s lips to look like they were saying “yeah yeah yeah.” that must gotten a lot of laughs.

  some time after the murder, mark david chapman said he did it to publicize catcher in the rye. it’s at least as worthwhile as impressing jodie foster. the thing is, people said he didn’t really care much about the book before the murder at all. he didn’t even cry at the part where holden drops the record.

  john lennon signed a copy of “double fantasy” for mark david chapman before the shooting. this album sold for a lot of money at auction.

  it was not the first time people got carried away when a beatle died. paul mccartney was only dead for a little while, but people still talk about it. concordances list references to death in beatles lyrics. if you hold up a mirror to the sergeant pepper’s album, you can read the words one he die on the drum. when this is compounded with the paul mccartney lookalike contest that was won by william campbell, things get really interesting.

  nobody wondered whether william campbell were really dead or alive.
  
  if you play the tape of the shooting backwards, it looks like mark david chapman is actually dropping the book, running to the rock star’s side, and bringing him back from the dead with one shot.

  imagine people thinking he was some kind of messiah.

  imagine john lennon climbing back into himself.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Sep 14, 08:12pm

  I really like the closing sections of this.

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