Kalvin brought Bruno to the bar a few weeks ago (outside bar, don’t worry, we drank our one-dollar Lone Stars responsibly, and yes, it was Shangri-La). I’d never met Bruno before, but I felt like I knew him, because his name was Bruno. And as one would expect from Bruno, or perhaps knew without being told, Bruno is:
- From New Orleans
- A part-time art school alum from his high school days
- Potentially in a legal struggle with a former employer
- An expert on my inner psyche
So when conspiracy theories came up, and I talked about how Paul Is Dead, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Bruno steered me straight.
You see, I’d long imagined that all these things were proof that Paul McCartney had died in a car accident in the 60’s and been replaced with the winner of a lookalike contest by a British government that was terrified of the mass suicides that would result if Paul McCartney was found to have died in a car accident:
- The album cover of Abbey Road (which was released on my negative 35th birthday, by the by) looks like a funeral procession: Angel up in front, all in white, ready to take him in; Black-dressed undertaker next up, preparing the body for burial; Barefooted out-of-step corpse next in line; The gravedigger, in his denim work clothes, bringing up the rear.
- The first track of Abbey Road, Come Together, says these two things in the verse about Paul: “He say, ‘one and one and one is three,’” (i.e., this all adds up) and “Got to be good-lookin’ ‘cause he’s so hard to see,” (i.e., Paul Is Dead, man).
- Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s relationship worsened following the mid-60’s.
But Bruno enlightened me. The Beatles, he told me, were bored. They were annoyed with the press. They wanted to sell a bunch of albums, but then they wanted to do some new things. So they started planting clues. They planted them well. They steered us astray. Astray so far that it was a cutting truth Bruno told me that day:
The secret is not that Paul Is Dead. The secret is that Paul Is Alive.
Merry Christmas.
