{"id":4875,"date":"2015-01-30T12:43:55","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T17:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thefest.com\/kdstaging2\/?p=4875"},"modified":"2015-01-30T12:43:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T17:43:55","slug":"what-do-the-beatles-have-to-do-with-selfies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/selfies","title":{"rendered":"What do the Beatles have to do with selfies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s infectious, The Chainsmoker\u2019s narcissistic, beat-jammed song. As I run, I listen to the lyrics and giggle at the girl who\u2019s forlorn over getting only 10 likes for her selfie in the last five minutes, the girl who whiningly wonders, \u201cshould I take it down?\u201d
\n 
\nMy I-pod is eclectic, and up next are The Beatles, harmonizing in my ears. \u201cShe Loves You\u201d is quickly followed by \u201cHey Jude\u201d and suddenly, I see it! What made The Beatles incredibly timeless was not their selfie-ness, but their selflessness. Instead of focusing on themselves, The Beatles focused on us.
\n 
\nSure, the boys started out at Square One with songs that asked the girl to \u201cPlease Please Me\u201d and to \u201cLove Me Do.\u201d But with a tiny bit of confidence and experience under their belts, John, Paul, George, and Ringo relinquished self-adoration for something bigger.
\n 
\nThey began to focus out, not in.
\n 
\nIn the years to come, The Fab Four would give us Lovely Rita, Dear Prudence, Mr. Kite (and company), Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Mean Mr. Mustard, Rocky Raccoon, Maxwell (avec his silver hammer), Bungalow Bill, Julia (a very real girl), Girl (deep breath now!), that nameless lass who was finally, finally leaving home, Michelle, the girl who graciously permits Paul to drive her car, Desmond and Molly, JoJo, Sweet Loretta Martin, Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie, the man who blew his mind out in a car, Nowhere Man (closely resembling John Lennon, but not a clear-cut selfie), the girl who doesn\u2019t miss much, athletic Mother Superior, Darling (of Oh!), You Who Never Giveth Me Your Money, Little Girl (who\u2019d better run for her life\u2026if she can), and oh so many more. \u201cThe Lads\u201d populated our world with people like us and unlike us. They created a cast of characters with whom we identified, related, or rejected. They spun stories that drew us into other magical worlds.
\n 
\nThrough the eyes of these four Liverpool boys, we plunged under the sea to live in a submarine. We tended an octopus\u2019s garden. We rolled up for the Mystery Tour. We were happy just to dance with them. We reluctantly hung our red dress back up in the closet. We discovered what it was like to be dead. We let them take us down to Strawberry Fields. We anguished over lost friends in an eerie L.A. fog, and we raged on the brink of Revolution! We lived lives beyond our tiny rural, suburban, or even urban worlds. We reached out.
\n 
\nJohn was the only one who really wrote \u201cselfies,\u201d and we were so unaccustomed to hearing these boys speak of themselves that we completely overlooked what John was saying. When he penned, \u201cI\u2019m a loser, and I\u2019m not what I appear to be,\u201d we assumed he was talking about someone else\u2026another \u201ccharacter,\u201d as it were. When he cried for \u201cHelp!\u201d we thought it was just a heady theme song. When he said, \u201cI\u2019ve got every reason on earth to be mad, \u2018Cause I just lost the only girl I had,\u201d we thought it was a fictional scenario. That\u2019s how infrequently these boys focused on themselves!
\n 
\nThe delight of The Beatles lay (and still lies) in their ability to get us to see others, to hear the stories of others, and to care about someone beyond ourselves. Even in his Christmas carol, John is admonishing our selfishness and urging us to see and care for the poor and hungry. Time and again, The Beatles urge us to look beyond the \u201cME\u201d to the \u201cWE.\u201d
\n 
\nLook, there\u2019s absolutely nothing wrong with a little selfie now and then. It\u2019s a good place to start. After all, you\u2019re asked to love others as you love yourself.
\n 
\nBut once \u201cselfied\u201d\u2026move on. Because in the end, (after all) the love you take is equal to the love you make.
\n 
\nJude Southerland Kessler
\nhttp:\/\/www.johnlennonseries.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s infectious, The Chainsmoker\u2019s narcissistic, beat-jammed song. As I run, I listen to the lyrics and giggle at the girl who\u2019s forlorn over getting only 10 likes for her selfie in the last five minutes, the girl who whiningly wonders, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,117],"class_list":["post-4875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baby-boomer-beatles-blog","tag-jude-kessler","tag-the-beatles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4877,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions\/4877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}