I saw something this week that blew me away. I decided to risk my life and go to NorthPark mall. Where else can you see a $20,000 Warhol print next to a $4,000 set of boobs?
But the land of the hot, fake-chested Park Cities mommy has suffered lately. First, a woman took a bullet in the face from a car-jacker, then some robbers yahooed a quarter million bucks worth of watches from Ben Bridge Jewelers. Perfect for Grand Theft Auto, not so cool for a retail oasis.
Anyway, I'm there in NorthPark, tending to my knife wound, when I look up and there it is – John Lennon's piano. THE piano. I had heard about it.
John composed "Imagine" on it in 1971. It is not the white one from the video, but a more modest, plain-looking walnut Steinway upright that sat in his apartment. It bears the dark oval burns of unattended cigarettes.
You can easily imagine a composing, too-deep-in- the-process-to-take-a-drag John hunched over it, giving birth to greatness. For some reason, stuff like this really moves me. Small little places where enduring things are born. I stood there, looking at it, while kids and shoppers moved around me.
I remembered a day in seventh grade shortly after I moved to Dallas, when my friend Ricky taught me to play the song on my parents' bar-room-sounding Baldwin. I thought it was magic that my fingers could make the sounds as I squeaked out the words in a prepubescent register.
Imagine me, thinking the sentiments and insights of the song had only occurred to me and John Lennon. The embarrassing ignorance of youth, and the crushing loneliness of a new town – they are still as fresh as I let them be.
"Imagine" is still played in Strawberry Fields in New York every year on John's birthday and death day, and it is still played by me at parties every once in awhile. I always think of my friend Ricky, and I always quit before the bridge, which he never taught me. Drunk girls don't know the difference.
The owner of this piano is George Michael, who took a break from public bathrooms long enough to purchase the thing for $2.1 million in 2000. He and his boyfriend have been putting the piano on display around the world to promote peace at places associated with violence. Too bad NorthPark now qualifies.
Hear Gordon on "The Ticket" KTCK-AM (1310) weekdays from 5:30 to 10 a.m. Catch him on TV on The Gordon Keith Show, Saturdays at 11:35 p.m. on Channel 8. E-mail him at gordon @gordonkeith.com.
