Toward a More Bitter Pacifism - "Imagine"

The original version of this song, performed by John Lennon, first debuted over a decade before I was born. Still, my mother was a huge Beatles fan, and so hearing this song served for one of my earliest childhood memories.

That version, of course, was bright, dreamy, optimistic. It carried, deep in its lyrical folds, the promise of a better tomorrow. This updated cover, performed by Maynard Keenan side-project A Perfect Circle, carries truck with none of that. It is mournful, bare, angry. It prays for peace, and knows that it will find none.

On the evenings before mission, laying in bed as my comrades slept, I used to listen to this song and dwell what might await me once I left the safety of the wire. I remember the pain of my separation from Anne, the dread that I might never see her again, the guilt of feeling that I had doomed my marriage to end in widowhood, and I found something I knew in the tones of Maynard's voice. I used to look up, squinting, as the F-16s roared skyward over my motor pool, and think of that clanging piano. I thought of the American people back home, some who wanted me home, some who wanted me to stay, and I felt abandoned to a loneliness I had no ability to understand.

This song helped me "get it."