TrulySignificant.com honors John Lennon on the 45th anniversary of his assassination. Featured on this show is the talented Darin Murphy, featured in the Broadway musical Lennon. Hear the inside story on John Lennon based on Darin doing the show through a beautiful blog that Ariana Huffington published. Enjoy this and the rare insightful stories about John Lennon through the lens of Darin Murphy who channeled his best Lennon on Broadway with Yoko Ono in the audience. When I was born in the fall of1964, the Beatles had just completed a full-scale invasion of the world (they actually were greeted as liberators). In my home the sound of the Beatles was like mother’s milk, and the voice of John Lennon was as recognizable as those of my own parents. It was the envy of the music industry and ironically, John himself despised it, but in no way could it ever be mistaken for anyone else’s. And I couldn’t get enough of it. “Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was. When I looked in the mirror at twelve, thirteen…I’d trance out and watch my face changing, becoming cosmic and complete. My eyes would get bigger and the room would vanish.” On December 8, 1980, I was 16 and watching Monday Night Football as Howard Cosell announced John’s murder to America. Many would say that a part of them died that night, but not me. On the contrary, a part of me was born. I had always been an admirer, but suddenly I identified with John more than ever, and I discovered I could deliver a spot-on impression of that distinct voice. When I acquired my first 4- track tape machine, I would dissect the Beatles’ recordings and recreate them as closely as possible. Those recordings eventually led to a job performing in a Lennon production on Broadway, which was seen by Arianna Huffington, which led to you reading this at this moment. That’s just one of many serendipities and synchronicities that occurred within the cast and crew of LENNON over this past year, and they fed profound energy to a project that was already unique to anything else any of us had ever done. For all of us in the company, and Yoko Ono, who visited often, LENNON was a spiritual trip that transcended both show and show business, and I got to know a few sides of John that I hadn’t before. Though we were dealing with a forty-year-long story that ended a quarter century ago, many of us, onstage and in the seats, felt as though we were actually experiencing John in the here and now. Perhaps that is where the real story of John Lennon lies, not in the places and dates and times, but in the people who have experienced him. There are those close to John who were enchanted by his charm, warmed by his generosity, frustrated by his stubbornness and wounded by his cruelty. And there are those far from him who are captivated by his charisma, inspired or enraged by his politics,enamored by his expressions of love or, like me, galvanized by his craftsmanship and charged by his spirit. Today as much as ever, artists use the talents of John Lennon the way Native Americans used the bison. Besides his musicianship and sensibility, we gain inspiration from his work ethic, his intellect, his literary skills, his presence onscreen, his comic timing, his artistic boldness, his naked candor, and his philosophy on life, which changed shape as his search for his own authenticity widened. “…The hardest thing is facing yourself. It’s much easier to shout “Revolution” and “Power to the People” than it is to take a look at yourself; find out what’s real inside you and what isn’t, when you’re pulling the wool over your own eyes, that’s the hardest one.’ It was no accident that Lennon left such a lasting musical legacy. He and McCartney had set out to do it purposely, to create music for future audiences as well as their own. But John had an even loftier goal: advancing the evolution of human consciousness. He talked and sang about it constantly, about how everyone could make it happen just by getting their minds together, “projecting our images in space and in time…raising the spirit of peace and love.” But he also warned us that the responsibility for bringing about such change lies in each of us as individuals. “You have to do it yourself…I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.” We’ve been challenged, more than ever now, to recognize the man- made forces that lie behind our suffering; the prisons we’ve built for ourselves by limiting our thinking and our perceptions of reality; the ego-influenced illusions by which we live and die. These issues are front-page headlines, right now, every day, and that is why the words and dreams of John Lennon matter every bit as much now as they did then. At the heart of the matter is Truth, and it’s important to realize, as Lennon did, that Truth is not some inanimate object to be manipulated, but a natural force living in the fabric of the soul...
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30 mins