AMARTITHI 2016

My spiritual master, Avatar Meher Baba, dropped His body on January 31, 1969. Every year on this date, thousands gather at Baba's Tomb-Shrine (also known as the Samadhi) on Meherabad Hill in India for a celebration—not just to remember Baba, but to experience His presence and His love.  The Amartithi (meaning "eternal date") festivities climax with fifteen minutes of silence outside the Samadhi, beginning at 12:15 in the afternoon, the exact time Avatar Meher Baba shed his physical form.  

The one time I attended Amartithi, in January of 1990, I was lucky enough to spend those fifteen minutes just outside the Tomb, sitting on the ground with my head pressed against the cool stone.  The power of that silence, of Meher Baba within that silence, was so profound, so sacred and magical, that words could never capture it. It bypassed the mind and ran straight to the deeps of the soul.

It runs there still.

BALLOON RIDE

The other day I had a long conversation with John Siuntres for his wonderful Word Balloon podcast.  We covered Batman: Bad Blood, the new Augusta Wind series, Justice League 3001 and lots of other things.  It was, as always, a genuine pleasure talking with John.  Click here to listen.  Hope you enjoy it!

TURN OFF YOUR MIND, RELAX AND FLOAT DOWNSTREAM

With the ballyhoo (there's a word you don't hear very often) surrounding The Beatles' recent, wildly-successful, debut on various streaming services, I thought this would be a good opportunity (perhaps excuse is a better word) to indulge my Beatles-obsession and revisit my list of top twenty Beatles tracks, originally presented here back in 2009.

A word of warning: these are my top twenty selections today (the numerical order is almost irrelevant.  Any one of these songs could be number one).  The Beatles treasure chest is so deep, and filled with so many musical jewels, that I could probably compile another list, with twenty different songs, tomorrow. 

20. “Please Please Me”

Their first number one single. As fresh, as exciting, as filled with humor and energy, as anything that followed. Right out of the gate John Lennon proved he had one of the greatest voices in rock and roll.  And he kept getting better.

19. “Don’t Let Me Down”

As honest, and emotionally naked, a song as the Beatles ever recorded. No surprise that the wounded, desperate voice at the center of the song is Lennon’s. “Don’t Let Me Down” provides the blueprint for much of John’s solo career: autobiography, straight from the heart.

18. “Come Together”

“Come Together” isn’t the greatest Beatles song, but it’s one of the most brilliant recordings the band ever made.  Abbey Road may have been the group’s last album—with tensions high and everyone pretty much desperate to get out—but you’d never know it from the way they played together on this track.  McCartney’s bass and Ringo’s drums alone are worth the price of admission, with Harrison’s guitar work not far behind—and it’s all topped with a snaky Lennon vocal that manages to be as inspiring as it is sinister.  But the real hero here may be producer George Martin, who gives the track an incredible polish, without ever obscuring the song’s down and dirty roots. 

17. “If I Fell”

According to myth, John was the acerbic rocker and Paul was the melodic, tender-hearted balladeer. In reality, McCartney was one of rock’s great screamers and Lennon’s hard shell masked an incredibly soft center. Here John offers up one of his most beautiful, and honest, love songs—with Paul'’s harmony offering perfect support.

16. “We Can Work It Out”

I still remember hearing this come over the radio in 1965. It didn’t sound like any other Beatles song I’d ever heard—especially the middle section, with that funereal harmonium pumping away and Lennon and McCartney—sounding more desperate and anxious than two rich, happy rock stars should—telling us all that life was very short and there was no time for fussing and fighting. The Beatles were clearly changing and that fact was as thrilling as it was disturbing.

15. “Tomorrow Never Knows”

Psychedelia went into labor with “Rain,” but it was born with this extraordinary track: Lennon channeling Timothy Leary channeling The Tibetan Book of the Dead. “Lay down all thought, surrender to the void...it is shining, it is shining...” Still great advice, if you ask me.

14. “A Hard Day’s Night”

The essence of Beatlemania—all the joy and wit, euphoria and lunacy—boiled down to two minutes and thirty-three seconds. Once again Lennon and McCartney are in perfect balance—you could write an entire book about the blending of those two incredible voices—and it all kicks off with a glorious opening chord that musicologists are still dissecting.

13. “All You Need Is Love”

There are some who dismiss this song as so much hippie claptrap. Me, I’m of the opinion that it’s one of the wisest, truest songs ever written. The message is so clear a three year old could understand it, but listen to the lyrics and they open up a whole universe of meaning. Not a hint of claptrap to be found.

12. “Here, There and Everywhere”

As perfect a love song as has ever been written. If McCartney had retired immediately after recording this, his place in the songwriter’s hall of fame would still be secure.

11. “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”

John Lennon saw this strange, tortuous collision of imagery, angst and varying musical styles as a mini-history of rock and roll—and it certainly is that. It’s also one of the oddest, most disturbing and exhilarating songs in the Beatles catalogue. A journey down the rabbit hole that was the Mind of Lennon, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” is, even after forty seven years, a continual revelation.

10. “Let It Be” (single version)

McCartney at his most soulful and introspective. The album version, produced by Phil Spector, is a bad mix, with the drums clomping all over the place, the lead guitar noisily intruding and poor Paul stranded in the middle. The single version, produced by the impeccable and brilliant George Martin, is in perfect balance.

9. “Blackbird”

A gorgeous melody, a flawless lyric, and a performance as honest as any McCartney—who sometimes hides his art behind artifice—has ever given. This is the song “Yesterday” wishes it could be.

8. “In My Life”

For years McCartney claimed that Lennon wrote all the lyrics while he supplied the melody. Then Paul changed his story, claiming that he actually co-wrote the lyrics with Lennon. Lennon insisted that he wrote all the lyrics and most of the music, with Paul helping out with the melody. I tend to believe Lennon, who spoke about this song with great passion, and in great detail, during his last interviews; but, however “In My Life” was composed, this Rubber Soul track remains one of the Beatles’ greatest achievements. It’s not surprising that a Mojo magazine panel of professional songwriters selected it as the greatest pop song of the twentieth century.

7. “Across The Universe” (Let It Be...Naked version)

One of the (many) wonderful thing about the Beatles is the fact that their songs evolve in the listening, the tracks continually revealing new layers and levels, and, because of that, “Across The Universe”—a cosmic cry from John Lennon’s heart—grows closer to my heart every year. There have been several different versions released, but the version on the otherwise unnecessary Let It Be...Naked brings out all the song’s magic and transcendence. No wonder NASA beamed it into space.

6. “I Am The Walrus”

A surreal, psychedelic masterpiece—with a fierce Lennon vocal (there’s some raw anger beneath the druggy haze) and insanely brilliant George Martin orchestration that perfectly matches John’s equally insane, and equally brilliant, lyrics.

5. “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End”

Paul McCartney at the peak of his powers, leading his band-mates through a memorable finale that manages to wrap up not just one of the Beatles finest albums—Abbey Road—but their entire astonishing career.

4. “Here Comes The Sun”

Optimism, cosmic consciousness, shimmering guitars and gorgeous harmonies entwine in George Harrison’s greatest Beatles-era composition: the best Lennon-McCartney song that John and Paul never wrote.

3. “Strawberry Fields Forever”

The first song recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, this is Lennon at his most dreamy and introspective and the Beatles at their most brilliantly experimental. “Strawberry Fields” was yanked from Pepper—along with the wonderful “Penny Lane”—to be the Beatles first single of 1967. Had both those songs been included on Pepper, the album might have lived up to its hype. (Note:  the video below does not include the entire song.)

2. “A Day In The Life”

Lennon’s vocal is one of the most magnificent in the history of popular music—so cold, it’s hot; so emotionally removed that it becomes extraordinarily intimate—and the collision of John’s cosmic alienation with Paul’s down-to-earth everyman persona detonates an ending that Lennon, accurately, described to producer George Martin as “a tremendous build-up from nothing up to something absolutely like the end of the world.” Yes, Sgt. Pepper is brilliant, a work of genius and blahblahblah—but it’s also the most over-rated album in the Beatles catalogue. (For my money, Rubber Soul, A Hard Day’s Night, Abbey Road and The White Album are all superior efforts.) “A Day In The Life” is the place where 60’s mythology and musical reality meet.

1. “Hey Jude”

When I was a teenager, lost in adolescent angst and misery, I’d sit for hours feeding my dour mood, listening to the most depressing music in my collection. Then, when I was ready to get over myself, I’d put on “Hey Jude” and, instantly, hope was back. The song is honest, heartfelt and, by the end, downright majestic. A brilliant, moving—and utterly unpretentious—work of art.

© copyright 2016 J.M. DeMatteis

BAD BLOOD

My latest animation project, Batman: Bad Blood—the sequel to last year's Batman vs. Robin—will be available for digital download this week (the 19th to be precise). The DVD will follow on February 2nd.  Here's a new clip to whet your appetite. Enjoy!

 

The movie was directed by Jay Olivia and once again stars Jason O'Mara as Batman, Stuart Allan as Robin and Sean Maher as Nightwing.  So ends today's shameless plug!

HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS

On television they’re trotting out Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch, It's a Wonderful Life and seemingly-infinite variations on A Christmas Carol.  Here at Creation Point we have our own Yuletide tradition, a short Christmas tale of mine called The Truth About Santa Claus:  offered annually as a kind of cyber Christmas present.  My way of wishing all of you who visit this site the happiest of holidays and the most magical of Christmases.  I offer it again this year—along with a trio of wonderful illustrations by my friend and collaborator Vassilis Gogtzilas.  So grab a plate of Christmas cookies, pull a chair up close to the fireplace and enjoy.

THE TRUTH ABOUT

SANTA CLAUS

“THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS!”

He’d been thinking about it for days—ever since he heard Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo announce it on the school bus—and he didn’t believe a word of it, not one word.  (Well, maybe ONE.)  But Cody had to be sure, absolutely, positively sure—

—and that’s why he was hiding behind the couch at midnight on Christmas Eve.

His mother was there, asleep in his dad’s old easy chair, the reds and blues of the Christmas tree lights making her look peaceful and happy and impossibly young.

The tree, by the way, had not ONE SINGLE PRESENT underneath it.

That didn’t make sense.  If there WAS no Santa Claus, if his mother was the one who bought the presents, wrapped the presents, stacked them under the tree, then how come she hadn’t done it?  How come she wasn’t awake RIGHT NOW arranging them all?

He got scared.  Maybe there wasn’t going to BE a Christmas this year.  Maybe Mom had lost her job and they didn’t have any money and so she COULDN’T buy him any presents and—

And then Cody glanced over at the windows and noticed that it was snowing.

Or was it?

If that was snow, it was the WHITEST snow he’d ever seen.  It was snow as bright as moonbeams, as bright as sunlight, as bright as...

Stardust.

Quickly, but quietly (he didn’t want to wake his mother), he scurried to the window and looked out.

It was coming down and coming down and COMING DOWN all across town, whirling and whipping, spinning and gyrating, out of the night sky.  Glowing so brightly that it almost hurt his eyes to look at it.  And Cody saw that it certainly wasn’t snow, and it absolutely wasn’t rain, it wasn’t ANYTHING he’d ever seen before.  But each drop, no...each flake, no... each BALL of glowing WHATEVER IT WAS, seemed to pulse and spin, soar and vibrate, as if it were alive.

And the stuff, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS (and he knew now that it was magic.  He just KNEW), wasn’t collecting on the streets, wasn’t piling up on the rooftops.  It was MELTING INTO (that’s the only way he could put it:  MELTING INTO) every house (no matter how small) and apartment building (no matter how big).

EVERY house and apartment building.

EVERY.

He looked up.

And there it was:  coming RIGHT THROUGH THE CEILING of Apartment 3F, HIS apartment, swirling, like a tornado of light, around the chandelier and then down, down, down—

—STRAIGHT FOR HIS MOTHER.

At first he almost yelled out a warning, “Mom!  Wake up!  MOM!”  But something made him stop.

Instead of yelling he ducked back behind the couch and watched, eyes peering over the top.

Watched as the light-tornado wheeled around his mother, so fast, so bright, that he could hardly even SEE her.  But he COULD see her.  Most of her, anyway.

And what he SAW...

The light poured in through the top of her head, through her eyes, through her chest, through her toes.  It lifted her up—still sleeping!—and carried her out of her chair and across the room.  And as she floated—

—she started to change:

Her hair became white, her nose became red, her belly ballooned like the most pregnant woman in the history of the world.  Her feet grew boots, her head grew a hat, her nightgown grew fur.  An overstuffed sack sprouted, like a lumpy angel’s wing, from her shoulder.  And then—

AndthenandthenandTHEN, it wasn’t his mother there at all, it was him, it was SANTA CLAUS!  STANDING RIGHT THERE IN CODY’S LIVING ROOM!  Santa Claus who, with a laugh (exactly like the laugh Cody always knew he had, only better) and a twinkle in his eyes (exactly like the twinkle he’d always imagined, ONLY BETTER) reached into his sack and pulled out package after package, present after present, and placed them, carefully, like some  Great Artist contemplating his masterpiece, under the tree.

When he was done, Santa Claus stood there, grinning and shaking his head, as if he couldn’t BELIEVE what a beautiful tree this was, how wonderful the presents looked beneath it.  As if this moment was the greatest moment in the history of Christmas, as if this apartment was the only place in all the universes that such a Christmas could ever POSSIBLY happen.

And then the MOST amazing thing happened:

Santa Claus turned.

He turned slowly.  So slowly Cody couldn’t even tell at first that he was moving at all.  And—slowly, SLOWLY—those twinkling eyes, that Smile of smiles, fixed itself on the two boy-eyes peering, in wonder, over the top of the couch.

And what Cody felt then he could never really say:  only that it was better than any present anyone could ever get.  Only that it made his heart so warm it melted like magical WHATEVER IT WAS, trickling down through his whole body.  Only that it made him want to reach out his arms and hug Santa Claus, hug his mother, hug his father (and FORGIVE him too, for running out on them) and his aunts and uncles and cousins (even his Cousin Erskine who was SUCH a pain) and Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo (who really wasn’t so bad most of the time) and all his  friends and teachers and the kid in his karate class who always smelled SO BAD and, embarrassing as it sounds, it made him want to hug everyone and everything in the whole world including rabbits and snakes and trees and lizards and grass and lions and mountains and, yes, the EARTH HERSELF.

Cody wanted to hold that gaze, to keep his eyes locked on Santa’s, forever. (Or longer, if he could.)  Wanted to swim in that incredible feeling, drown in it, till GOD HIMSELF came down to say:  “Enough!”

Except that he blinked.  Just once.  But in that wink of an eye, Santa was gone.  Cody’s mother was asleep in the chair again and, for one terrible moment, the boy thought that the whole thing must have been a dream.

Except, under the tree:  THERE WERE THE PRESENTS.

Except, out the window:  THERE WAS THE SNOW, the rain, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS, shooting up, like a blizzard in reverse, from every house, every apartment building.  Shooting up into the heavens, gathering together like a fireball, like a white-hot comet—

—and fading away into the night:  going, going...

Gone.

Without so much as a tinkling sleigh-bell or a “Ho-ho-ho.”

Not that it mattered.

Cody looked at his mom.

Cody kissed her.

“I love you,” he said.  And he was crying.  Happy tears.  Christmas tears.  Like moonbeams, like sunlight.  Like stardust.

Mom stirred in the chair, smiled the softest sweetest smile Cody had ever seen. “I love you, too,” she said.

And then she drifted back to sleep.

Cody sat at her feet, warming himself, warming his SOUL, by the lights of the tree.

And soon, he, too, was drifting off to sleep.  And as he drifted, a wonderful thought rose up, like a balloon, inside him.  Rose, then POPPED—spreading the thought to every corner of his mind.  Giving him great comfort.  Great delight:

“One day,” the thought whispered, “when you’re all grown-up, when you have children of your own.  ONE DAY,” the thought went on...

“It will be YOUR TURN.”

Merry Christmas.

Story ©copyright 2015 J.M. DeMatteis

Art ©copyright 2015 Vassilis Gogtzilas

A CENTURY OF SINATRA

As I've said many times before, Frank Sinatra's always been there in my life.  My mother—who, as a teenager, would cut high school to go swoon over Sinatra at New York's Paramount theater—made sure his songs were playing constantly in our house.  (For the record:  My father loved Frankie just as much.  If you were Italian, you had to.  It was a genetic imperative.)  I may have been a child of the rock and roll generation, but I was always under Sinatra's spell; and the older I got, the more I came to love—make that revere—his mix of swagger and vulnerability, bravado and tenderness.  Most of all I came to appreciate the aching humanity in Frank Sinatra's music.  For all his Vegas, Rat Pack glamor, he was, beneath it all, a skinny kid from Hoboken who knew the same loneliness and despair, hope and joy, that we all do.  And he was blessed with an extraordinary voice that could express it in the most natural, and yet magical, of ways.

In honor of what would have been Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday, here are some classic moments—starting with a very young Sinatra singing what was then his signature song.

And now here's Frankie at the height of his powers, with the amazing Count Basie and his orchestra storming away behind him.

And, finally, Sinatra in the autumn of his years, voice waning (and all the more poignant for it), facing down the darkness with eloquence and heart.

Happy Birthday, Frank.  The song is you, indeed.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS

Some time after ten o'clock, on the night of December 8, 1980, my phone rang:  it was my old friend Karen Berger calling to tell me that John Lennon had been shot. "Is he okay?" I asked.  "He's dead," she replied—and it was clear from her tone that she knew it was true, but couldn't digest that awful reality.

I got off the phone, switched on the television—and the global mourning ritual soon began.  At first I was taken aback by the public displays of grief.  Strange as it sounds, my connection to John Lennon—to his extraordinary life and music—ran so deep that his death felt profoundly personal.  It was as if I'd lost one of my dearest friends.  I couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that millions of people around the world had lost one of their dearest friends, as well.

"He's dead."  Those words still resonate in my mind and heart.  Thirty-five years ago?  It feels like thirty-five minutes.