It was twenty-four years ago today...

I’m listening to “An die Musik,” a two-and-a-half-minute thing of beauty composed by Franz Schubert sometime around 1817. Verena Krause is the soprano, Jörg Demus the pianist. It was written as an ode to music, a meditation on a poem by Franz von Schober. But to me it always sounded like a first snowfall, if snow could sing. Fitting music for early December. You can hear an inspired version by Bryn Terfel and Malcolm Martineau here.

Not that it’s snowing in New York, mind you. In fact, it’s more like April here. And maybe just a wee bit cruel, too. I just got back from my final walk with Ilsa the now sleepy dog, and in the time it took us to go around the block we were set on edge not once, but twice, by two separate events. These things happen in New York. Let’s not forget that on this same date 24 years ago John Lennon was murdered outside the Upper West Side’s Dakota Building.

The events Ilsa and I encountered just now weren’t nearly as extreme. It really is much safer in the city today. They just weren’t on our radar.

The first incident occurred as we walked east towards Tenth Avenue. In front of the single mothers' home on my block, a young black couple were trying to quiet their crying son, who couldn’t have been more than five. The father didn’t look threatening by any stretch—he was short, thin and wore horn-rimmed glasses. It was what he was screaming that got to me: “Shut up, okay? Did you hear me? You better shut up..." Now I know this guy might have been stressed himself after a lousy day at work; it wasn't like he was hitting his child. But I’ve never known his approach to work when you’re dealing with a likely exhausted and confused little boy.

The second event unfolded as we turned onto West 48th Street. Two men who were drinking beer outside the corner deli decided to follow us. At one point we were all completely lost to anyone’s view behind the trailer of a parked eighteen-wheeler. It was then that these guys picked up their pace and closed in, and I thought a mugging was surely in the works. But then they stopped, looked us over and turned around. Whew. I guess all those workouts at the gym finally paid off. Or maybe they realized they'd left their beer unattended (a likelier scenario). That’s all right, guys. Have one on me.

One last thought about John Lennon. I know his image has taken a beating over the years. But we should remember John Lennon first and foremost as an entertainer and a songwriter. I've always admired how he and the rest of The Beatles approached their jobs as craftsmen. They were true believers in the work ethic, something I’m sure had to do with their working-class roots in Liverpool, England. They were perpetual optimists and lovers of life, too. There isn’t a song in their catalogue you couldn’t play for a child today.

That was the thought, here's a true story. In 1967 the BBC had just finished setting up satellite relays to connect television networks around the world. To commemorate the occasion, a special called “Our World” was planned. The program would, in the BBC’s words, “for the first time ever, link five continents and bring man face to face with mankind, in places as far apart as Canberra and Cape Kennedy, Moscow and Montreal, Samarkand and Söderfors, Takamatsu and Tunis.”

The Beatles were commissioned to pen a song for the occasion. This is what a 27-year-old John Lennon wrote and performed with his band before a worldwide audience estimated at half a billion:

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
All you need is love

As the radio waves that carried that message drift ever outward, bound only by the space we cannot calculate, I'd like to say, God bless you, John Lennon, wherever you are.