Assassinating The Dead

I was a part-time call center agent. I would receive calls from mysterious clients through my old-fashioned cellular phone during break from my other job, which was teaching in a college with retirees as my students. I presumed they were septuagenarians. Most of them, I learned, were retirees who had never finished, or at least stepped in, college before they had become successful and famous in their respective fields. The only face I thought I recognized among this bunch of gray hairs was Gloria Romero’s. She had a different name stamped on her name tag though. The room was poorly illuminated by a lunar eclipse kind of light or semi-darkness; so, there’s a possibility that she couldn’t be her. If that old lady was really her, and this dream I was having was a scene from a film, then the scene was brilliant, i.e., an actress disappearing into the character, an excellent cinematography and a meticulous production design. There’s another interesting student that caught my attention. He was clad in dark suit, which almost blended with the partial darkness inside the room. Looking at his direction, you could see his face floating in the darkness. He had a tag hanging around his neck which said “I used to run my family-owned airline business despite never having had stepped in college.” That’s a mouthful of a description fitted into the modest-sized cardboard, which also floated in the darkness. The other students were just a chorus of catatonic faces so scary that I had goose bumps all over my body and I couldn’t finish any sentence that I would utter while lecturing. I know what a poker face is. Theirs, however, were the non-expression of soulless beings. It was like a twilight zone.

Clients would call to book assassination service requests for a fee. My job as call center agent required me to log and forward service requests to the main office and to track and report to the clients any progress on any contracted service. One client, a woman with a funny voice that sounded like Matutina’s, ordered for the assassination of John Lennon. I didn’t argue with her request although I knew John Lennon was already dead more than two decades ago. Everyone knew he was assassinated. It is hard not to argue if you’re sure of what you know or are going to say. However, it was a policy not to argue with clients no matter how insane their requests would be. As if she read my mind, the woman said “Kala ng buong mundo, patay na siya. Siya ang boss mo at isa siya sa mga estudyante mo. Babae na siya ngayon. Patayin nyo siya, bibigyan kita ng incentive.” She didn’t say what the incentive was. Before I logged the service request, I woke up.

Dreaming in metaphors never failed to amaze and interest me. This one, I guess, is easy to interpret. Let me.

Our parents (or grandparents) were engrossed with the Beatles - Hey Jude, Yesterday, Hard Day’s Night, With A Little Help From My Friends, All You Need Is Love, Twist and Shout and (even) Yellow Submarine. At the height of their success, Beatles disbanded after recording together as a group their last song, Let It Be. John Lennon was later assassinated. His and Beatles’ music, however, didn’t die with him. Artists (songwriters and singers) would come and go and new song genres, i.e., rap, alternative rock or heavy metal, would come into existence. But the songs of Beatles never really left the air waves. Yes, John Lennon’s soul is still in his music, which never dies. The melodies never ceased to please almost everyone who would chance upon them while shifting frequencies on the radio. Our generation has embraced Penny Lane (Kenny Rankin), I Saw Her Standing Here (Tiffany), and We Can Work It Out (Stevie Wonder) although some of us may have been clueless that these songs are Beatles originals. Recently America and some parts of the world applauded the Davids of American Idol Season 7 for rendering different, but fresh and admirable, interpretations of Eleanor Rigby (Cook) and Imagine (Archuleta).

Paul McCartney is the only Beatle living. Although someone took the Beatles lead guitar decades ago and the other two (George and Ringo) are already dead now, the Beatles’ legacy shall remain. Businessmen who sell new artists with their so-called brand new music will be incapable of killing the music of Beatles. Part of the air waves will always belong to Revolution, Obladi Oblada, I’ll Follow The Sun, Strawberry Fields Forever, Instant Karma, I Want To Hold Your Hand, and so on. The day John Lennon was killed was the day his bands’ music would live forever. To say “all things under the sun shall perish but the music of John Lennon and the Beatles shall live” can’t be a blasphemy.

-ooo-

If I would argue with the caller I would say, "Tell me, how do you assassinate the dead?"

-ooo-

Apropos Gloria Romero, on the other hand, will be dead (maybe) 20 years from now. That's a fact she and we all accept. However, her character in this dream (if it was indeed a character she was playing) can easily be killed. A writer can easily kill her regardless of motivation. But the dream ended before the assassination request was logged. Her art, I guess, will not die.