Column: Here, There, and Everywhere: Inside the Mind of a Yalie
Oasis, The Cure, The Smiths, and Queen have overtaken my playlists at various points, and while my soft spot for the music of the Brits is undeniable, there has always been a star among stars: The Beatles. The first song I ever sang in front of a crowd was “A Hard Day’s Night.” I have listened to “In My Life” at the takeoff of every plane ride. Last February, during a concussion scare at Yale Health, I was asked to put on a song that would calm me down, and in the fever dream that followed, three doctors sang “Blackbird” to me. Lennon’s solo songs belong in this history too: “Beautiful Boy” makes me think of my brother, and “Imagine” belonged to my grandfather, who passed away before I could meet him, and I sang it with my school choir. For years “Strawberry Fields” was something I sang along to in the car with my dad driving. Then I was standing in it. I have cheesed over “Oh! Darling” and daydreamed with “And I Love Her.”
Every year, the Beatles top my Spotify Wrapped, and every year I am reminded that you cannot receive a special message from your favorite band when your favorite band broke up in 1970, though Paul does send a shoutout, which I happily accept. And if you have not noticed the name at the top of this page, this column shares its title with one of my all-time favorite songs. This is the piece in which I finally address it.
The Beatles’ discography has always worked like a dictionary to me. Whatever life produces, there is an entry for it, and for an average of two minutes and forty-five seconds, I listen, funnily enough, to feel heard. You could very well call them in modern terms a musical Reddit, in the sense that everything that has ever happened to me feels like it already happened to John or Paul or George or Ringo, and the thread is still up.
Lately, though, I have started wondering how many of these songs I understood before I had any business understanding them. I knew the Beatles’ metaphors for leaving long before I had left anywhere, and the words to nostalgia before I had very much to be nostalgic about. So let me walk you down Abbey Road, through a life I have only partly lived.
I would start aboard the “Yellow Submarine,” where the living arrangements require very little explanation. The submarine is yellow, our friends are aboard, and that is enough to make a home. It is a perfectly reasonable and lovely childhood ambition, before the question of what you want to be grows more specific and “with everyone I love” stops qualifying as an answer.
Soon enough, being loved by everyone becomes less urgent than being loved by one particular person, and the early catalog has plenty to say about that. “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” So much asking, so little certainty, and the conviction that somebody just saying “yes” would sort out everything else.
“She’s Leaving Home” complicates that conviction, because everyone in it has a different idea of what love ought to provide. The girl slips out at dawn while her parents sleep, and when they wake, their lines run underneath the story like a second song, listing everything they gave her while her absence quietly answers that something was still missing. The two parts overlap without ever reaching each other, acting like parallel lines. The song changes depending on whose side you follow. I suspect that growing up involves a fair amount of discovering that the same story can sound entirely different to someone who lived it beside you. I can understand why she leaves and still ache for the people who cannot. I have been the person who left, and someday I will probably be the person who aches.
And understanding yourself is not any easier. Lennon later said that “Help!” had been a real cry for help, although it was recorded brightly enough to dance to, and I like that the request survives the cheerful delivery. It is possible to get somewhere you desperately wanted to be and still struggle once you arrive, and I find it incredible the way a song people sing at full volume makes this admission feel a little less lonely.
This is also where “In My Life” starts sounding different. Lennon was only in his twenties when he wrote its lyrics, already looking back on people and places he could not recover. I used to think nostalgia required more distance than that, yet there are versions of my life I already cannot return to. Even when the people are still there. Even when I can book a flight to the place. Even when I am standing in the very same spot I am reminiscing about.
Skipping ahead to “When I’m Sixty-Four” feels premature, but every so often the question slips into my mind. There is so much time. Still, I wonder whether I will find someone with whom to pull weeds, mend things, and discuss whether a holiday is too expensive. After all the urgency of wanting somebody to hold your hand, I like imagining that they might still be around to do ordinary, mildly inconvenient things with you, post-excitement, post-careers, even post-kids.
But something I have been thinking about, more and more since being away from home in college, is that needing a hug from your mommy and finding comfort in the familiarity of your dad’s cologne might never go away. I do not think growing older will mean graduating from the need to be comforted, which makes the steadiness of parents, mentors, older relatives and friends all the more astounding to me. I am beginning to realize how often the people I turn to for reassurance must want someone to reassure them, too. Paul has described “Let It Be” as coming from a dream about his late mother. Behind the advice people turn to when they need perspective is a man who missed his mum. I can imagine spending a lifetime learning to cope and still nothing replacing hearing from my mother that things will be all right.
The great thing about songs is that they can stay with us forever. The people who introduced them to you, who danced with you and played them on car rides, who helped you dissect every lyric or argued with you about whether they were any good, will one day be gone. So will the artists singing them, the DJs playing them, and the producers who helped make them. But you can still press play. You can return to the songs that comforted you through every stage of your life and hear them exactly as they were, even as everything around you changes.
For a brief moment, wherever I am and however old I get, I can time travel back to this past summer, singing “Hey Jude” with strangers and friends during England’s World Cup matches and obsessing over Jude Bellingham with my girls. With “Wonderful Christmastime,” I am beside my brother in the car, my dog Rocket on my lap and my parents in the front, all dressed beautifully, the vibes high, going to my grandma’s house on Christmas Day. And on the Christmas theme, there is “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” on my Insta private story as I finish my last A-level exam, ready (I really was not) for senior summer. Then “Michelle” at the front of the bus in Punta Cana during Spring Break, me allegedly hungover, harmonizing with my friend Alexia while everyone’s asleep. Dancing to “All You Need Is Love” at graduation with my complicated friend group of more than ten years, one that has been through a lot yet there is still so much love in. My friend Kushan recognizing “Norwegian Wood” in the Acorn and telling me all about the sitar and the story behind its production. At my grandpa’s birthday party, “Twist and Shout” playing, trying to do the twist with my grandma and my mom, the best dancer I know by the way. And to my “Beautiful Boy” forever and ever and beyond, my little brother, who I tear up thinking of—I will always be there to hold his hand. Then, going to as recently as literally “Yesterday,” no pun intended, singing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” with my girlfriends Bia, Bea, Elham, Alexia, and Ana, getting ready to hang, post a marvelous dinner.
I have been a little ambitious in trying to arrange a whole life out of Beatles songs, but with good reason. All in all, I still want everyone aboard the submarine, even as I leave home, and with a little help from my friends could imagine who might be beside me at sixty-four. Somewhere along the way, after having written about and traveled “Here, There, and Everywhere,” and before reaching Abbey Road, I would very much like to love, and be loved, the way this ultimate love song feels.