NOBODY PLANS FOR NO ONE GOING NOWHERE

The Beatles have a theme song for nobody plans.

It’s called Nowhere Man.

This persistent cultural detective heard it when it first came out.

I was eleven and it went right past me.

Now?

Like all Baby Boomers I look to the Beatles for answers to the big questions.

At least that’s the suspicion the generation live under.

 

Boomer: It’s all about alienation and distance.

Youthies: Go cry in your silk handkerchief you bloated old waste of space.

Boomer: You don’t know what it’s like being stuck in a huge house with such low interest rates you can’t move.

Youthies: Oh it hurts so bad. You don’t know what it’s like living in an apartment so tiny there’s barely room for a bed, or jammed into a small house with so many roommates you have to live in the garbage porch.

Boomer: I mean the housing market is ruthless. I don’t know if I can live in a house without bull-nosed corners that is half the size and twice the cost of what I’ve already got.

Youthies: Sounds like a terrible problem, an awful dilemma to wake up to every day you pampered pussy. Real life is still happening out here.

Boomer: I need a plan.

Youthies: What?

Boomer: I need a plan.

Youthies: No, not that.

Boomer: I feel an aching in my heart, a sorrow I can’t explain.

Youthies: No. You’ll be fine. Calm down.

Boomer: Ah, ah, ah. Too late.

 

Nowhere Man Plans

“Nowhere Man” is among the very first Beatles’ songs to be entirely unrelated to romance or love, and marks a notable instance of Lennon’s philosophically-oriented songwriting.

Philosophically-Oriented?

 

 

It went past me at eleven, but started sinking in the older I got.

It’s still sinking in.

 

He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?

 

Sharing Nobody Plans

He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.

 

When Georgia O’Keefe went looking for a house in New Mexico she wanted one with a door in a wall.

That was important. Seems important to me too, but she wanted a particular wall and a particular door.

I like the idea of a door, answering the door, having a door to answer, but not so much it’s a deal breaker.

It seems like a symbol, a metaphor, more than an architectural element.

In my twenties I liked sitting behind my door in my nowhere land making plans for nobody. That’s what I told myself.

I was good at it, so good that I moved three times in one year on the same block in NW Portland and took my nowhere land with me each time.

That’s when Nowhere Man really started sinking in.

 

After I got married plans changed. I couldn’t be a nowhere man and be married.

That’s not how it works. Some try and fail, which is one reason for high divorce rates.

Then we had kids and nowhere man disappeared in one season after another of soccer and basketball and football and wrestling.

How does it work now?

If you’re sharing a life with someone you care about, with people who mean something special to you, you make plans together.

Make plans, or go along with the plans being made by others.

Either way, show up ready and willing to help with what needs doing.

You can get back to sitting in your nowhere land later.