Week 7 - Imagine All The People

Much on my Second Life journey has surprised me these past couple of months.  The warmth which people have shown toward a lowly noob.  The relatively short period of time it took for me to be welcomed as "part of the gang".  How easy I found it to be myself, albeit in the guise of this virtual alter ego.  The simple joys of sharing music with others.  The existence of a peculiarly unique cover version of YMCA.  The ambiguous nature of Graz Firecaster's relationship with AAi's resident camel.  So many surprises, but none quite as touching or genuinely emotional as I experienced this past week.  The week that marked the 30th anniversary of the untimely and tragic death of John Lennon.

AAi is, as I may have observed many times before, always a place where I can expect to encounter great music coupled with great company and never was this more true than last Tuesday.  In remembrance of John Lennon and the incredible gift of music which he left to his and future generations, AAi resident DJ's Graz Firecaster & Claire Elgund brought us a 3 hour Beatles marathon taking us from the Fab Four's early days in Hamburg all the way through to that iconic rooftop performance.  Whilst expectations were inevitably high due to the sheer quality of the back catalogue available, I don't think any of us were quite prepared for just how emotional the night would prove to be.

The music was of course fantastic, accompanied by the usual smattering of banter but with the added element of interesting little Beatles facts and stories which Graz & Claire would use to introduce each track.  This extra dimension added a huge amount to an evening already heavy with meaning and the local chat was even busier than usual with everyone sharing thoughts and memories triggered by specific songs, pretty much every one of which seemed to carry some kind of meaning for someone in the club that night. It was truly a memorable night and one I was incredibly glad to have been part of.

Although I was alive that day 30 years ago when John Lennon was shot I was still too young at the time to really carry any memory of the event. Nevertheless his music, and the sense of loss which so often comes with it, has been there pretty much my entire life.  Here at AAi however I was able to hear how his death had affected others as they shared stories of where they had been when they heard the news, how their parents, friends or schoolteachers had reacted and so on.  These shared tales brought home to me more than ever before just what a shocking moment Lennon's death had been for so many people across the world, and how 30 years later those effects were still felt.  The sharing of music and experiences certainly made the night both memorable and moving.

The evening was brought to a close with a minute of silence where we all stood, AOs and Dance HUDs falling still, to simply remember and reflect, after which the unmistakable "Imagine" floated over the still silent crowd as we allowed ourselves to be struck by the simply power of this shared moment.

The genuine emotion in those moments, shared by a group of people who would be unlikely to ever be gathered together in RL, was for me the single biggest surprise I've experienced in SL.  I don't think the same meaning or reaction could even be replicated in a RL environment - there was simply something unique and magical about all of us being united in that one moment.   The music and memory of one man who had, in some way, touched each of us reaching out without heed to differences of nationality, religion, gender, age or any of the other labels we too often use to divide ourselves.  Something tells me that's exactly the kind of thing he was trying to tell us back then and here, 30 years later, we were still listening.

Imagine all the people, living life in peace....