LOVE IS ALL, LOVE IS YOU
Given the perpetual tumult of the world lately (especially in the West), I always find it touching how a brief snapshot of a moment in history, preserved (at least for now) on our social media timelines, can reach out and remind us what this life is really all about.
A clip of the late Sir George Martin, famously known as the “Fifth Beatle”, being greeted by surprise at Rio de Janeiro airport by the all-girls youth choir Meninas Cantoras de Petrópolis caught me unawares as I was briefly doomscrolling and stopped me dead in my tracks.
Watching the youth choir sing the transcendent “Because” from the iconic album Abbey Road to the invisible producer-puppet master behind those late, classic Beatles recordings brought home just how powerful the impact of great art can be when it has travelled from the studio, where five men collaborated to make audio magic together, and then proceeded to reach and touch the hearts of people all across the globe.
Love is old, love is new
Love is all, love is you
What must that feeling have been like for Sir George as the voices of the future sang a timeless anthem from his past? The symbolic realisation of what art can be at its highest level must have touched his heart in a unique way, more than any recognition from his peers, more than any awards or epithets.
There is also something supernatural (in a beautiful way) about hearing the sound of a young choir that almost surpasses the original (it is, at the very least, its equal) because it has a sincerity untarnished by experience that makes it seem like an ethereal, holy incantation.
Perhaps the greatest gift for any artist is to witness, during their lifetime, the impact their work has had on the world. Think of those now-immortal artists whose true stature only became apparent to later generations, from Van Gogh and Schubert to Emily Dickinson, whose creations would transcend their own lifetimes and speak to generations yet unborn.
But Sir George had the luxury of seeing his value as an artist measured in his own lifetime, and it must have been overwhelming to witness music born of his imagination travel through time and reach him in unexpected ways, in unexpected places. The music, given over to humanity, is continually reborn each time strangers and performers deliver their own interpretations of the original work he helped create with the Beatles.
Perhaps it is archived moments like this that feel so precious amidst the chaos of our messy present, where cultural destruction is increasingly on the rise. In an age of permacrisis, the realisation that something beautiful and true can travel through time, free of the constraints of the world's Groundhog Day-like karmic tyranny, liberates us. It reminds us that beautiful things survive despite the madness and that there is still something truly wonderful about being alive.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.