{"id":3079,"date":"2012-04-11T23:09:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T03:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3079"},"modified":"2015-09-26T14:11:19","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T18:11:19","slug":"imagining-a-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=3079","title":{"rendered":"Imagining A Lot(tery)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Theme Songs Page<\/a> | Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagining a Lot(tery)<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine, by John Lennon (1971), encountered 1971<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | See it here<\/a> | Lyrics here<\/a> | Sheet music here<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine: The lucky guy has just been given his life back, and mine has been taken.<\/p>\n

365<\/h3>\n

Imagine: A college quad at night with someone running across it screaming \u201c365!\u00a0 365!\u201d\u00a0 It is December 1, 1969, the date of the first draft lotteries.\u00a0 The lucky screamer, born February 26, has just been given his life back.\u00a0 Whatever plans he\u2019s made for his future are secure, at least from the threat of being called away to take part in that bigger lottery called the Vietnam War.\u00a0 There\u2019s no chance that Number 365 will be inducted.\u00a0 Not only will he be spared the certain sacrifice of two years of his life, but he is immune to the risk of the even shorter straws: killing, dying or being wounded.<\/p>\n

Imagine: A crowd of us sitting together a few moments earlier in Houston Hall, the student union building, listening to the draft lottery being broadcast.[1]\u00a0 Afterwards, I wander despondently out onto College Hall Green, where the shouter sprints by.\u00a0 I am filled with envy and terror.\u00a0 Since I was born on a July 13, my number is 42.<\/a>\u00a0 My prognosis is the exact opposite of Number 365\u2019s.\u00a0 While I remain an undergraduate, I will be protected by a student deferment.\u00a0 But when I graduate, as inevitably I shall in only three semesters\u2019 time, they will reach me.\u00a0 If the War goes on, as I know it will, and I do not find another deferment, as I doubt I shall, it is a certainty.[2]<\/p>\n

42<\/h3>\n

Imagine me speaking to my parents by phone later that night.\u00a0 I curse at my mother, and, with rare restraint, she takes in both my anger and its untoward expression without an angry reply.\u00a0 Much later, after I have children, it will be obvious why.\u00a0 A threat to me is a threat to her.\u00a0 Still, little in her experience could lead her to accept my outlook.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no problem imagining what has formed her views.\u00a0 She has been through the Second World War.\u00a0 She is no flag-waver, but she remembers her pride in the young GIs she met in the trains in those days.\u00a0 Nor has anyone had to sell her on the evils of Communism \u2013 and Vietnam, they tell us, is a war against Communists.\u00a0 No doubt she and millions of mothers like her feel instinctively that Horace was right when he wrote: \u201cDulce et decorum est, pro patria mori<\/em>\u201d (It is sweet and fitting to die for one\u2019s country).\u00a0 You support your church, your political party, your nation, and your nation\u2019s wars: that is her outlook. \u00a0And these loyalties might call upon you to surrender up your only son.\u00a0 Bring on the sweetness and the fittingness!\u00a0 Up to this moment, I think, that conclusion has also been part of her outlook.<\/p>\n

But now she has to imagine a contradiction to all that.<\/p>\n

Imagine me seeing nothing sweet or fitting about dying, fighting, or putting myself at risk for Richard Nixon or his evil war.\u00a0 From the moment in February of the previous year, during a poetry reading by Allen Ginsberg, when I had realized that I now opposed a war I had once supported, I am growing more and more horrified at the holocaust of young men, American and Vietnamese, the War is creating.\u00a0 That type of sacrifice might be justified to bring about a world without Hitler, but hardly a world without Ho Chi Minh.<\/p>\n

Holding Off Catastrophe<\/h3>\n

And now it becomes up to me to imagine ways to avoid this catastrophe bearing down on me.\u00a0 I try.\u00a0 I borrow books from my parish priest about Catholic views of war.\u00a0 I thus become knowledgeable about Just War Theory.\u00a0 I apply for conscientious objector status, but my Draft Board turns me down, unconvinced that I am against all possible wars, and concluding that my convictions are firm only about the current one. \u00a0I blush, because they have seen right through me.\u00a0 \u00a0I apply for a medical deferment on the basis of back pains I\u2019ve been having.\u00a0 I learn that I\u2019m the third generation of my family with wretched backs, that my mother has often been in traction.\u00a0 I get the doctor mother of Carol, the friend who lives in our house, to write a letter supporting my deferment claim.\u00a0 I undergo a couple of draft physicals, one in a big tall building off Broad Street in Philly.\u00a0 My medical deferment claim is rejected.\u00a0 This time the call is wrong; I\u2019m not malingering.\u00a0 (In later life my back will be operated on three times.)\u00a0 But the maw of Moloch must be fed, and questionable deferment claims must be rejected.<\/p>\n

Imagine the inner dialogues, about the reality that, if I make good my escape from military service, someone else will have to take my place.\u00a0 Imagine me deciding that if the worst comes to the worst, I will flee to Canada, because I will not accept either service or imprisonment.\u00a0 Easy to say, but flight would mean disruption of my graduate studies and those of my young wife, and, so far as I know, I would never be able to come back to the United States to visit parents or in-laws or friends.\u00a0 Imagine the misery drawn out, as my deferment fights defer the moment when I am required to report for induction.<\/p>\n

Reprieve<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine May 11, 1972, the date my Draft Board, for reasons that elude me entirely, reclassifies me 1-H.\u00a0 I open the envelope and see the card, and realize I\u2019ve never heard of 1-H.\u00a0 It turns out that 1-H means not available for induction.<\/a>\u00a0 The card looks like, and in fact turns out to be a reprieve, one I had not even sought.\u00a0 In later years I will hear rumors that it was issued to people suspected of being gay, but also that it simply meant that for whatever reason, you had not been inducted in your \u201cyear,\u201d and so the Board was moving on to the next year\u2019s candidates.\u00a0 (The timing would pretty much work, since when the card arrives, I have been out of college and undeferred for about a year.\u00a0 In which case, my sheer persistence in seeking a deferment has paid off after all, unimaginably well.)\u00a0 In any case, no one ever tells me why, then or ever.<\/p>\n

Imagine how I feel after it sinks in.\u00a0 While I also understand that a 1-H is subject to reclassification as 1-A at any time, I never hear from the draft board again.\u00a0 And now it is my turn to feel that my life has been given back to me.<\/p>\n

A Song on the Radio<\/h3>\n

Later, I can remember myself very shortly after I know I\u2019m probably saved, driving down Light Street in Baltimore, when John Lennon\u2019s Imagine<\/em> comes on the radio.\u00a0 I dissolve in emotion.\u00a0 It\u2019s not simply that Lennon is asking us to imagine a world without war; he sees war as part of a complex of bad things:<\/p>\n

Imagine there’s no countries<\/address>\n
It isn’t hard to do<\/address>\n
Nothing to kill or die for<\/address>\n
And no religion too<\/address>\n

At this point in my life, I\u2019m a very serious Catholic, but I understand the role religion has played in so many wars, so I\u2019m not blaming Lennon for his point of view.\u00a0 I think it a perversion of religion to go to war for it, so I can agree with his diagnosis without signing on to his prescription.<\/p>\n

But the way I respond goes to something far deeper than that: it\u2019s the heartbroken melody, those langorous piano chords.\u00a0 To be sure, there\u2019s a hopeful note in there.\u00a0 But mostly Lennon\u2019s voice comes across as exhausted by sadness.\u00a0 And it speaks to me because that\u2019s how I feel after this close encounter.\u00a0 I could have been a war casualty; I\u2019m not, thank God.\u00a0 But I tell myself I must never forget what it felt like nearly to have been one.\u00a0 I must not forget the months of dread, of helplessness and anger.\u00a0 I must not forget the way the good and patriotic motives of my countrymen were put in service of bloodthirsty insanity that threatened my life and my life\u2019s plans.\u00a0 And I never do.<\/p>\n

Closing Vision<\/h3>\n

But beyond even that, I resolve never to forget Lennon\u2019s closing vision:<\/p>\n

Imagine all the people sharing all the world<\/address>\n
You, you may say<\/address>\n
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one<\/address>\n
I hope some day you’ll join us<\/address>\n
And the world will live as one<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n

And I never forget that, either.[3]\u00a0 If you can imagine.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

[1]<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Just possibly watching it on TV: my memory is vague on this, but I know where we were sitting, and I cannot picture a TV set there in that era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span> I had been trying to find words to convey what it felt like to be told that, by the random operation of a lottery, your country had slated you to (possibly) be killed.\u00a0 And then I saw the 2012 movie of Hunger Games<\/em>, and it was there on the screen, in the reaping scene at the beginning, in the breathless look on the face of the heroine\u2019s sister when her name is drawn in the lottery to participate in a fight to the death.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean to suggest the situation is a perfect parallel, but it captures the feelings perfectly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3]<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span> Not that Lennon was passive benevolence personified.\u00a0 If you listen to the Imagine<\/em> album, the one the song came from \u2013 and you should \u2013 you\u2019ll find it\u2019s chock-a-block with violent emotions, including a savage attack on Paul McCartney (How Do You Sleep<\/em>?) and the obvious remnants of a fight Lennon must have had with Yoko Ono (Jealous Guy<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0 And this album is a step down from the primal scream that was John Lennon\/Plastic Ono Band<\/em> (1970), maybe the angriest album I\u2019ve ever heard \u2013 and also one of the greatest.\u00a0 Nor is it possible to catch that line \u201cImagine no possessions\u201d in the official video without smirking; as he lip-synchs that line, John is seated at a grand piano in a huge room, looking out over privately-owned gardens.\u00a0 He was maybe imagining no possessions but wasn\u2019t exactly letting go of them himself.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn, except for artwork<\/p>\n

\u00a0Theme Songs Page<\/a> | Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lennon\u2019s voice comes across as exhausted by sadness. And it speaks to me because that\u2019s how I feel after this close encounter. I could have been a war casualty; I\u2019m not, thank God. But I tell myself I must never forget what it felt like nearly to have been one. And I never do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[3388,3036,2733,3375,3379,1020,3383,1988,3382,3376,3384,2779,3387,3386,3374,3378,3385,3380,183,3390,3335,3094,3391,2057,3392,3381,3389,373,54,3377,1467],"class_list":["post-3079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-1-h-classification","tag-3036","tag-2733","tag-3375","tag-adolph-hitler","tag-allen-ginsberg","tag-back-problems","tag-baltimore","tag-catholic-war-theory","tag-college-hall-green","tag-conscientious-objection","tag-draft","tag-draft-board","tag-draft-deferments","tag-draft-lottery","tag-dulce-et-decorum","tag-flight-to-canada","tag-ho-chi-minh","tag-horace","tag-how-do-you-sleep","tag-hunger-games","tag-imagine","tag-jealous-guy","tag-john-lennon","tag-john-lennonplastic-ono-band","tag-just-war-theory","tag-light-street","tag-president-richard-nixon","tag-richard-nixon","tag-second-world-war","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3079"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5528,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079\/revisions\/5528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}