My dear George, on your birthday

I like to think that my mother taught me the lyrics of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" when I was eight years old, during the beginning of my Beatles education, but that never happened. I like to think that when I was in high school, my walls were covered in posters of George from St. Pepper's and All Things Must Pass and the Beatles. That didn't happen either. In high school, my walls were covered in magazine clip-outs - I specifically remember collecting a series of Absolut Vodka advertisements - and movie posters like Trainspotting and Clueless. I listened to Dave Matthews Band. My brother was on the brink of discovered classic rock for the both of us around the time I asked for Revolver for Christmas. I had asked for the album because I was obsessed with "Got To Get You Into My Life," the upbeat, peppy Paul song I mistakenly assumed was about Linda. But the song, and the album really, was about drug discovery and enlightenment. I remember skipping over the Hindu-influenced "Love You To" and not even finishing the album to hear "Tomorrow Never Knows." Now, ten years later, those are two of my favorite songs of all time. But then, I didn't know you. 

I grew up under the influence of my mother and father's musical taste, as most children do. My father only listened to classical music: Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Schubert. My mother, an opera singer, listened to an array of musicians and bands, ranging from Edith Piaf to Simon and Garfunkel to Willie Nelson. And, of course, the Beatles. But her exposure to the Beatles was limited. My parents were born and raised in Tehran, where only trickles of western music were allowed to seep over the impressionable teenagers. Public schools in Tehran in the 60s were the equivalent of Catholic schools in the 60s. They were separated by gender, all children were required to wear uniforms, and their knuckles were readily whipped with rulers. But by the time my mom was 16, she had her shit figured out. She'd take a mini skirt and knee highs and heels and hide them in her locker, and after school, once the last bell rang, she'd blossom out of her drab rags like a butterfly. There was a store in the bazar that sold British releases of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and other rock 'n roll bands that made it all the way to the Middle East, and my mom would spent every last cent of her allowance on them. 

I now realize that my mother's knowledge of Beatles only extended to pre-Rubber Soul Beatles. She never went beyond, never journeyed through the fields of psychedelic discovery and enlightenment dripping from your later albums, starting with Revolver. And it's interesting to look back and think that with my Christmas gift I had somehow released you into me. Into my consciousness. But I did.