#Paul had resolved his tensions with George at the time of his death

[thestarsarecool]

Axelrod asked McCartney how he left things with John and George. McCartney offered a sentimental recollection of Lennon.

"John and I had had a lot of arguments through the Beatles break-up, but I was very lucky because we had reestablished our friendship," McCartney says. "You remember little things about people. I remember sort of seeing him and he comes in and gives me a hug and says 'Touching is good.' I'll never forget that. Touching is good. So I do a lot of hugging now," McCartney says.

As for Harrison, McCartney recalls, "George I never really fell out with. We had a beautiful last meeting. It was very emotional for me. It was very touching. We sort of held hands and I realized we'd never done that 'cause you don't. You're Liverpool guys. You grow up together, you know? Here he was sort of terminal illness and we were holding hands." McCartney adds, "I think, I think it all is informing me, yeah. I think, you know, you, you've got great memories, you've got great emotions.

"I think one of the things I like about getting older is you can free your emotions more."

Source: CBS Interview with Jim Axelrod, “Now he’s 64.” CBS has it dated to September 2005, but based on the content of the article, it must actually be from June 2006.

[themagicalmysticalboy]

Rarepair week, george&paul? Angst/comfort maybe? Let it be era? Hurt my soul :)

a/n: you’ve got it babe! i actually did some research for the flashback scene so it’s pretty accurate to reality, according to Ringo’s and some crew member's accounts.

Don’t Let Me Down

For as cold as it had been for the last month, the sun was shining high in the sky. A peculiar sight that brought a hint of warmth to Paul’s face but did not extend further than that. He could be in a summer's day desert and still feel the cold churn in his stomach. Looming tall and strong over him was the Abbey Road studio. The uncharacteristic beams of sunlight lit the many windows with a yellow glint. A million-eyed monster ready to tear him to shreds if he dared step closer. And he did dare. He peeled himself off his car and stiffened instantly. He’d been leaning against the passengers' door so long that when the wind hit his back it sent a shiver right through him. Or maybe it was solely his nerves. Either way, he didn’t plan to dwell on it.

A few Scruffs were waiting outside with paper coffee cups in hand and drink carriers stacked against the wall. So George was in. He had really come back. The cold churn rose to his chest. At this rate, he’d be a human popsicle by lunch.

There was a disjointed chorus of “Hi Paul” and “Good Morning” which he replied to with a courteous wave. He’d been largely turned off by the Apple Scruffs for some time now but there wasn’t really any malice. Having your house broken into was more than a bit off-putting, though. So he felt justified. George was the most tolerant of them, buying them coffees and breakfast foods every so often. They must have missed him while he was gone. Yeah. Surely they did. Because I did. Paul pushed the sentiment to the wayside. They still had an album to make. They still had songs to record and a documentary to be part of. He couldn’t let his emotions get the best of him again. That had only led to an explosion.

Preparing himself with a stiffened posture and pushed back shoulders, he walked into the studio with a smile. It was almost painful to keep up but the cameraman was already in his face and he refused to let on to his nerves. He needed some inkling of control here and there was so little of that to grab hold of these days.

When he walked into the recording room, he found people scattered across the room but he didn’t find John or Ringo. It was still early in the morning so it made sense but he was undoubtedly rattled by the realization, becoming more rattled when he noticed George looking at him. Paul didn’t dare meet his eyes, drifting down to his feet. He looked soft, despite his sharp features. Cozy in his furry boots and warm jumper. He missed looking at that face and touching that body and kissing those lips. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d been able to do any of that. Too long.

George gave a thin-lipped smile before turning to Billy Preston at the piano. Was that a good sign or was this small sign of grace feigned for the cameras?

Whatever it meant, it drove Paul mad. He didn’t think he deserved forgiveness but he sure as hell would take it. There was no helping the intrusive memories of the aftermath of George walking out. He had done it so nonchalantly that no one was sure he had actually left until they got to the recording room and found him and his guitar missing.

Something had shifted in the room as soon as the three remaining Beatles looked at each other. John was breathing heavily with an icy glare. There was a glint in his eye that screamed danger. It was focused on Paul. Picking up the bass with a death grip on the neck, Paul just stared John down. There was a mutual understanding in the moment. The rage in both of them was bubbling over more and more by the second.

John yanked his guitar from the rack and they both plugged into the amps. No one seemed to remember the camera crew was still around. They just turned to Ringo, who was already at his drums, drumsticks in one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. He was pushing so hard it had to hurt. And that was it. John squared up to the mic and began to scream the lyrics to a song they'd already wrapped up but they all threw themselves into it without question. Screaming, banging, and heavy riffs filled the studio. Nothing made sense and every fiber of Paul’s being hurt so much that he didn’t care. He wasn’t alone in the feeling, at least. They all felt some level of hurt.

Ringo was even mad- at the situation or at George or at Paul, it didn’t matter. He banged and slammed away like never before. It sounded so wrong coming from him but at the moment it was the only right thing to do. They sounded perfectly horrible. There was a distinct addition to the vocals and Paul turned to find Yoko sitting on George’s little blue stool, wailing along with John’s screams. Yes. Perfectly horrible.

When the song was up the energy was still poisonous and thick in the air. They weren’t done, not by far. Paul stepped up to the mic and John did not move away. With little notion of what he was doing, he went at the lyrics of another song. The words spat from his tongue with vitriol and fire.

They all needed to scream. Ringo was at the mic at some point, coming up with random words on the spot. Really just to have something to yell about. 

When they finished, panting out the last seething breaths, Paul felt empty. 

“Way to fucking go,” John yelled, eyes fixed on Paul. “Way to go.” his voice was drastically quieter, more tired and sad and hoarse, eyes drifting to his feet.

Paul’s bass suddenly felt a thousand pound heavier, pulling the strap down against his shoulder painfully. Maybe it was more the weight of his mistakes than the bass. Everything felt painstaking and dreadful for the rest of the day. The anger was gone and the screaming was done. There was nothing else to keep his mind from wandering into a wall of depression.

In the present, sans John and Ringo, he shyly grabbed an acoustic guitar and went to sit in a corner. He worked on one of his own songs, quietly strumming and murmuring. He didn’t like it yet, keeping it to himself. The awkward air in the studio only exemplified his need for privacy. So he stayed tucked away, only speaking when spoken to, like a good little schoolboy. George had even come over to ask about the song but Paul told him it wasn’t right just yet. There was no way he was about to embarrass himself on top of all this.

He went back and forth for most of the day. Playing several takes of various songs before turning back to his own song. There was a part on one of the songs that Paul found needed a quieter guitar part. The thought of addressing this issue to George was met with resistance. Was he really ready to address him? The guitar part could be addressed later, maybe. He could suggest another take tomorrow. But the song. It just wouldn’t be right. And maybe no one would be willing to do another take later. That struck a nerve in Paul that rang louder than the rest of his rationale. 

“Maybe,” Paul started, resolving to look directly at George for the first time since he walked in. “The guitar could be a bit quieter next take, y’know? Just sounds a bit heavy.” He tacked on quickly, glancing at Ringo, “The drums too.”

Ringo gave him a pained expression. Paul looked George dead on with a weak smile, though he could see John’s cautioning glare in his peripheral vision. George’s eyes were dark and apathetic. His jaw was set tight.

George Martin came over just when he was about to respond. Oblivious to the tension between them, he clapped a hand on John’s shoulder with a grin. “That was a great take, lads. Why don’t you take a lunch break with the film crew.”

“Wasn’t good enough for Paul,” George huffed, leaving first. “But what is?”

George Martin didn’t hear the remark and walked off to talk with Mal.

“You’re really going to cock it up already?”

“What!” Paul went quickly to his own defense. “It was a suggestion, is all. I’m not treating him with kid gloves just because we had a row.”

“A row? He left the bloody band.” 

“Not being a prick for one day isn’t kid gloves,” Ringo suddenly chimed in.

Paul gaped. “Caring about the songs is being a prick now, is it?”

John huffed an indigent laugh. “You’re painfully stupid.” He left with Ringo in tow before Paul could ask for any clarification. Not that he was sure he wanted any.

Stunned by the attacks, he stared blankly at George’s guitar. He had absolutely none of his friends at his side. He had managed to push them all away when all he wanted, so desperately, was to bring them together. They were slipping through his fingers like grains of sand and all he could seem to do was open his hands to quicken the fall. He’d lose them forever. It was all his fault. How long would it take? When would they figure out he wasn’t worth the trouble?

He just wanted them to be alright. He wanted to go back to how they were and just tour a bit. Play on stage like they all used to love. The band couldn’t rip apart. It just couldn’t because Paul would tear apart with it. And yet here they all were, at wit's end with one another. The connecting link to this free fall was Paul, of course. He had made Ritch leave and then George. It was all too obvious that John wanted out - surely Paul’s fault as well. 

He couldn’t imagine a world without Ringo, John, and George playing at his side. He didn’t want to. It was something new and terrifying that had no qualms with keeping him up at night, even when three glasses of scotch in. He couldn’t recall the last time he slept without drinking. Even still, nightmares filled his dreams and made sleeping seem worthless and just as tiresome as not sleeping at all. What a poor excuse of a man he was becoming.

With a tight chest and burning eyes, he got up. Thankfully, the film crew had truly gone to lunch. He was mostly alone with a few straggling technicians in the booth.

There was no way in hell he could go to lunch now. Not while it felt like the world was out to get him. Not while he felt on the verge of crying. Instead, he decided to go outside for a smoke. The cold winter wind cooled his hot skin. He fell against the wall with a thud and bit his lip. His eyes were pricked with tears but he wouldn’t let them fall. Not here. Not now. 

Dragging a hand down his face, he dove into his pocket and pulled out a spliff he’d rolled that morning for this very reason. His hand was caught on his chin as he eyed the thing. A beacon of hope.

He wasted no more time in lighting it. The earthy taste coated his tongue and warmed his throat. He relaxed on the exhale and repeated the process until his mind was a little numb. The carefree smoke floated high above before disappearing into the brisk wind. It would be so much easier to disappear with it.

“Stay gone too long and they’ll think you quit too.” 

Tension pulled at his neck and traveled down his body. With an involuntary jerk of his fingers, the spliff fell to the concrete. He didn’t look at the newcomer and didn’t need to. The calming drawl could only be from one person.

“So?”

Paul reluctantly turned his head to find George’s steady gaze on him. Words abandoned his brain. “So,” he asked stupidly.

George’s features suddenly dropped and Paul noticed there had been a hint of lightness seconds before. Great. Already cocking it up. 

“Oh, fuck you, then.”

“George! No, no!” He jumped forward and grabbed George’s wrist. “Please, love.”

There was hesitation in George’s step. He shook Paul’s hand off but did not leave. “Do you even care? Care that I left.”

His brow furrowed and his mind swirled back to life. “Of course. We were all-”

“I didn’t ask about the others. Did you care?”

It seemed like such an absurd question. There was nothing to suggest he didn’t. He was downright miserable. Was that not plain to see? Something inside him made him want to switch back on the defense. Deflect and reject. But he couldn’t let himself slip anymore. Everything was on the line now. His entire relationship was up to bat. He’d just be honest. And honesty wasn’t all that hard when your heart wrenched at the thought of this charade continuing for another second.

“Yes! I cared. I thought you’d never come back and I was terrified.” He was desperately searching George’s face for any recognition of belief. “You didn’t answer my calls for weeks and I thought you wanted nothing to do with me. If you don’t I can't even blame you at this point. Just tell me what I did wrong.”

There was no hint of emotion from George. He had a corked brow that could mean anything. The time passing with no answer couldn’t be good. Maybe he wouldn’t answer at all and just leave Paul standing here like an idiot.

“You want to know what you did wrong?” A look of contempt screwed up George’s features. “I don’t even know where I’d start.”

A weight crushed every bone in Paul’s body. He deserved this. He deserved the heartache and pain. The more it hurt the better George might feel. He just had to hold his asinine tongue. 

“You treat me like I couldn’t find writing talent if it bit me in the arse.” Paul tried to interrupt, despite himself, with an explanation. “Shut up and listen!” George moved closer, sizing Paul up. “When’s the last time you took any suggestion I’ve made seriously? You’ve been screaming from the damn rooftop about staying together and getting back to basics yet you sit in your little fucking corner like a punished child, ignoring us to work alone. What’s the point, then? Just to show how much of a pain you can be? You act like you don’t want me- any of us- near your songs and then boss us around on our own.”

George was pulling in unsteady breaths. He leaned forward slightly, really looking into Paul’s soul.

“You weren’t even the one to ask me back. Had Ritch do it for you, you coward.” George pushed him into the wall and Paul took it. “And you have the gall to ignore me! Even when I came to you like a stupid loyal puppy! That’s how you see me, isn’t it? Your little puppy that you get tired of when it makes too much noise. Well, fuck you and your damn songs. Fuck whatever you think you’re doing. You’re not keeping us together and you never could.”

Just punch me. The thought was screaming at the forefront and wouldn’t settle. Too angry with himself to stop, he yelled back, “Don’t you think I know? I see everyone slipping away and turning from me and all I can do is push you further! No matter what I try or how good I think I’m doing, you’ll just leave me out cold.” Caught up in it all, he shoved George back. “And you’re not a puppy! You’re my mate. You’re- I love you, alright.” 

His voice cracked and, god, he was crying. He was actually crying and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“Really just didn’t think you’d come back if I asked. And if that makes me a coward then sure. That’s what I am. If being a coward is what I need to have you near, fine.”

A muscle in George’s jaw tightened. He was stiff and his eyes were damp. His voice was so soft when he said, “Why didn’t you look at me? When you walked in you wouldn’t even really look at me. And when I tried to talk you just buried your head in your notebook.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But as soon as you have an issue with a song you go in with those big eyes of yours and I don’t want to hate you. It’s not fair.”

“You’ve said it, y’know. I’m a right coward. Scared to lose you if I speak and losing you just as fast when I don’t. Shouldn’t have turned you away. I shouldn’t have ignored you. The song- the stupid song. Don’t know if I even cared about how loud your guitar was. I just wanted to look at you, I think.”

“Looking at me now, aren’t you?”

And he was. They had been staring relentlessly and it felt good, no matter how much yelling they’d done. He wiped harshly at his cheeks to clear them of tears. “I’m sorry for being a prick.”

“Aye. You should be.” The words might have hurt if the corners of his mouth didn’t twitch up. He rubbed Paul’s shoulders and arms. “Just talk to me, okay? I won’t disappear, I promise.”

His smile was sad but genuine. All Paul could ask for. He nodded but then realized he already missed the point. “Okay,” he voiced. “Talking. Always been my strong suit.”

George’s smile grew and he pulled Paul into a hug. He hugged back fiercely, balling his hands up in George’s jumper.

“I don’t deserve this.” The words weren’t meant to leave his mind but they seemed to come of their own accord. 

George moved him back and Paul almost pulled them right back together. “What do you mean?”

Bringing a hand up to caress George’s cheek, he tilted his head. “I don’t deserve to have you. Don’t deserve to have this band. Wouldn’t you be better off without me? I’m just here to cock it all up.”

“You… really mean that, don’t you?” With a shaky breath, George brought him back into the hug and gently held Paul’s head to his shoulder, petting down his hair. “No matter what happens to the band, it’s not because you don't deserve to have it. It’d be because we all need space, alright?” He held Paul a little closer. “And you don’t get to decide if you deserve me. That’s my decision.”

Paul nestled into the crook of his neck, scared to ask but not willing to keep it back. “And you think I do?”

“No. No. I just fancy hugging people I hate.”

Paul smiled into his neck. “Arse.”

[things2mustdo]

JAMES BLOODWORTH

@J_Bloodworth

5 MINS

18 SEPTEMBER 2018

Albert Camus is one of the great 20th-century critics of totalitarian thought. Along with writers such as Hannah Arendt and George Orwell, Camus identified the human longing for unity – and the impulse to escape the irrational absurdity of life – as one of the foundations for totalitarian political rule.

As such, his works offer something to the 21st-century reader in a complex, insecure world where the urge to embrace any “ism” that purports to explain everything is ever-present.

Born into poverty in a remote area of French Algeria, Camus began his political life as a man of the Left. He was active in the French Resistance to the German occupation during the Second World War and, from 1943 to 1947, edited the movement’s newspaper Combat in Paris. Camus would later oppose General Franco’s dictatorship in Spain and resigned in principle from his work with Unesco over the UN’s acceptance of Spain as a member.

Yet Camus’ most important contribution to 20th-century thought derived – like Orwell’s – from his attacks on the fashionable theories of the mainstream (French) Left. His suspicion of grand historical narratives – which viewed the individual as disposable – is worth holding on to when the complexity of contemporary life increases the temptation to throw one’s lot in with revelatory, all-encompassing explanations and solutions.

Camus fell out with his fellow Leftist intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre in 1952 over the latter’s acceptance of state terror as an acceptable price to pay in the name of the Communist ideal. In his 1947 novel The Plague, Camus mocked those who, like Sartre, justified the concept of the ‘necessary murder’ for political ends.

“But I was told that these few deaths were inevitable for the building up of a new world in which murder would cease to be. That was true up to a point, and maybe I’m not capable of standing fast where that order of truths is concerned,” Camus wrote sarcastically. By contrast, Sartre likened anti-Communists – with their delicate humanist scruples about the sanctity of human life – to “dogs” .

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Predictably, the French Left could not forgive Camus for his anti-Communist heresy, and although The Plague sold hundreds of thousands of copies, the pompous intellectual set orbiting around Sartre and his partner, the feminist author Simone de Beauvoir, greeted subsequent works by Camus frostily. Sartre commissioned a faithful underling to trash Camus’ 1951 philosophical masterpiece The Rebel, a book-length humanist critique of the totalitarian impulse.

In his sordid rejoinder to Camus’ response to totalitarianism, Sartre forgot a point that Orwell had made a decade and a half earlier: that some things are true even if The Daily Telegraphsays they are true. “Yes, Camus, like you, I find these camps inadmissible,” Sartre wrote of the Soviet gulag system, “but equally inadmissible is the use that the ‘so-called bourgeois press’ makes of them every day.”

In other words, one ought to stay quiet about Stalin’s gulags, lest the information be used as ammunition by Communism’s enemies. A similar line of thinking, if one can call it that, is discernible today. In our increasingly partisan political climate, lies are frequently given a veneer of truth by political activists if they are considered helpful to one’s own side. Those who have championed particular policies or causes in disparate countries – Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Iraq – typically fall silent when the time comes to count the pile of corpses produced by those policies or causes. Candidly to account for one’s errors of judgement may discredit the cause. And besides, what’s a little injustice now in the service of justice in the future?

The posthumous recognition of Camus as a great 20th-century philosopher in France hinges, at least in part, on his rejection of totalitarianism when so many of his contemporaries were disgracing themselves by justifying (usually from a great distance) the use of extreme violence to remake society along altruistic lines. In this sense, Sartre and others resembled the Communist fellow-travellers whom Arthur Koestler had likened to peeping toms, “peering through a hole in the wall at history while not having to experience it themselves”. The great feats of the new society were celebrated uncritically, while the horror stories were either rubbished or interpreted as a price worth paying. This kind of historical ignorance/revisionism goes on: just last week students at a London university described the Soviet gulag system – which worked over a million people to death – as “compassionate”.

But Camus’ contribution to anti-totalitarian thought extends beyond the internecine squabbles of the 20th-century Left. His embryonic theoretical approach, which led to his rejection of totalitarianism, is discernible in his early writings on suicide, and these have as much value today as when they were first written. The appetite in life for resolution, unity, and for an absolute reconciliation of life’s various chaotic threads, drives a person inexorably toward one of several conclusions. He or she may attempt to escape altogether from existential anxiety through death, or else by dedicating his or her life to hopes that are projected on to the future (by embracing religion or the urge to embody life with a higher purpose).

This offers a lesson to those who wish to improve today’s world. The desire itself is admirable. However, allowing ‘the cause’ to consume every facet of one’s life (aiming even to “politicise sleep”, as it was joked the Bolsheviks wanted to do) can also be a misguided attempt at negating life’s absurdity.

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Embracing the absurd needn’t lead to resignation and depression, however. Camus cannot accept that “refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living”. Instead, he urges readers to enjoy the beauty, texture and ambiguity that ordinary life has to offer, despite its essential meaninglessness. Orwell was aiming at something similar – albeit in a far less theoretical way – in his literary focus on the beauty of “solid things” and small worlds: the art of Donald McGill, the local pub, English cooking.

Camus uses the example of Sisyphus from Greek mythology to make his point – a point that eastern philosophers also make – about the power of acceptance. Sisyphus was punished by the gods for imprisoning death in chains. Once captured, Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to the futile task of pushing a large boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down again. He must do so over and over again; there is no escape. In using the example of Sisyphus as the tragic hero, Camus holds up the absurdity of Sisyphus’ fate and his acceptance of it as a wider lesson for life itself. One needn’t passively accept injustice; however, there is no ultimate resolution, no nirvana, paradise or classless society in which all conflict will finally be resolved.

In his later, more explicitly anti-totalitarian treatise, The Rebel, Camus takes aim at those who seek a political antidote for the condition of mankind in what Hannah Arendt had described in The Origins of Totalitarianism as “a suicidal escape from…reality”. The urge to rebel is an inherent feature of modernity, Camus maintains.

“Modern times begin with the crash of falling ramparts,” he writes of the French revolution. But surveyed from amid the rubble and bloodshed of the mid-point of the 20th century – the midnight of century, as the Russian revolutionary Marxist Victor Serge had phrased it – Camus notices that the desire to rebel often comes pregnant with the urge to dominate. “The slave starts by begging for justice,” Camus writes, “and ends by wanting to wear the crown.”

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The Rebel wasn’t an indictment of rebellion so much as an examination of the way in which revolutions frequently attempt to negate the tension inherent in political conflict, and in life itself. At some point, triumphant revolutionaries abandon pluralism for “complete negation or total submission”. Totalitarian ideologues have an undeviating view of life which seeks to exchange the fragmented duality of liberalism for human perfection.

“Since the world has no direction, man, from the moment that he accepts this, [believes he] must give it one which will eventually lead to a superior type of humanity,” Camus writes. Ideas such as Communism are, as Friedrich Nietzsche described them, merely degenerate forms of Christianity – yet another attempt at forging certainty out of the absurd.

What Camus offers the modern reader is a reminder that the temptation to think of a single political creed as the solution to our deepest longings is a dead end. Not only that, but it is a dead end that comes steeped in blood, however altruistic the proclamations of its adherents. Beware those who say that an ideology or movement has given them “something to live for”, for this is simply another evasion.