#it makes me sad that their relationship ended so acrimoniously given how close they were before :-( regicide will do that

[sneez]

my greatest source of inspiration: my own extremely silly posts on twitter dot com. they are professionals

#thomas fairfax #oliver cromwell #artwork #ooooo look at fairfax with his fancy long name. get in your normal tag young man #fairfax #that’s better :-) cromwell doesnt have an individual tag sorry mate #this is very very silly but i kept laughing about it so i decided i needed to Visualise......to Manifest #given how often fairfax was stricken with Fevers and Agues i can imagine this happening at least once. cromwell trying his best to organise #the troops whilst fairfax keeps up a steady stream of Utter Nonsense in the background #it makes me sad that their relationship ended so acrimoniously given how close they were before :-( regicide will do that #there is speculation amongst historians (or one at least. hi mr hopper) that cromwell promised fairfax that the king would not be executed #if he went on trial and fairfax (who seems to have been quite a gullible person) took his word for it and was subsequently traumatised when #charles actually Was executed #he seems to have spent most of the trial (which he conspicuously did not attend) praying for the king’s life which alas did not work :-( #and then much later (1658) cromwell had fairfax’s son-in-law arrested and fairfax went to try to get him out and he and cromwell ended up #having a big barney and fairfax stormed off and a week or so later (if i recall correctly) cromwell was dead. so they never made up......sad #but they were good chums in the 1640s! by the end of the decade cromwell was using secretaries to write all his letters except the ones to #his family and the ones to fairfax :-) besties #at least cromwell never found out fairfax helped restore the king immediately after he died! hooh boy #fairfax dies and wakes up in the afterlife and Immediately cromwell is like You Massive Bastard. You Wanker. You Cock #(alive cromwell would never say that because swearing is very un-puritan but i like to think he loosened up a bit after being dead) #what on earth am i talking about. stopping now

[inspiteallthedanger]

How likely do you think it is that john's The Importance of Being Erstwhile or sally and billy story is about paul？

Sure is possible. I’ve put the for and against in under the cut. Long, long, ramble, ramble, below the cut

Sally and Billy -

The case for:

The story line does fit him and Paul nicely:

The high-society ‘girl’ who is ‘independent’ and ‘beautiful’ who is ‘never satisfied’

The brash rocker that plays ‘mind games’ and fools around with others which makes the girl very sad

They miss each other terribly and are sad they couldn’t make it work but they were looking elsewhere for answers that they could have found in one another

There’s some language that makes me go hmmm, other than the above

The reference to dreaming (the dream is over)

The fact they didn’t understand one another (I know (I know) and Here Today)

Missing the boat (both that they’ve settled with other people but also Paul boat V the Yoko boat)

Perhaps even the Jesus reference given ‘Seen through religion’ line

Something about the music and the ‘over the hill’ reference just makes me think of WI64 and “We’ve been together for 40 years”...

So, case closed? Maybe not:

It’s not John's usual style of song writing? He’s usually so forthright, if he wanted to write about him and Paul, you might suspect he'd just do it. BUT, this seems like he's almost trying to write like Paul does? So maybe this could be him talking to Paul in his own language

The vibe of the song just doesn’t feel like it is. This is nonsense, but I’m a nonsense person. So there we are.

Verdict:

Either this is entirely throw away or he's writing something he thinks Paul will like (which we know they did) or he's got Paul on the mind and so out pops this. So, I guess I’m leaning to yes, but perhaps not in a literal sense. By which I mean it’s for him but not actually about him.

The Importance of being Erstwhile - Urg. This is really hard in almost exactly the way the above is.

The case for: So essentially if you tinhat for this one, it is meant to be a retelling of P&J’s second trip to Paris (bare in mind that Brian and Paul’s girlfriend Maggie were also meant to be there). The plot is about two people rekindling their romance when the protagonist (presumably John) gets called to meet their ex in Paris. There they have sex and have some good times until they break up three months later (”in a seething rage”). So, could it be about J&P? Well:

John and Paul were going through a bit of an off period due to the end of touring and both of them going off to do different projects and after they went back to Paris things seem to get very cozy again

The relationship described seems to be very on/off and also the protagonist feels ‘inspired’ by being with his ex again. That does sound familiar for sure

The reference to them having three happy months together until an acrimonious split could be the three years J&P had after that trip.

There’s a reference to Poppers which are a thing used during gay sex, although I have no way of knowing if that was a thing then or if John knew that (although probably knowing him)

The love interest’s name is both the above reference but also means friend in French

Aside from the plot: 

Paul has talked about how the word play and silly puns was his and John’s language and really important to the formation of their relationship. Now, this might well be sneaky Paul speak for, "Bloody John refusing to give me credit when I helped way more with the writing than he's admitting." Which, I think is true actually, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also true that it was the sort of humour they shared. So, when John’s writing this sort of thing, chances are good he’d be thinking of Paul

So case closed? I’m not sure....

We don't know that Paris actually symbolizes him and Paul to John. I know this sounds insane from a person that is convinced words like ‘friend’ and ‘yesterday’ are codes. But, John never much talked about either trip so and he hasn’t put it into any of ‘their’ songs. Paris is also the symbol of love and he went there with other people so... Maybe? I mean, he references where they used to stay in Paris when they were famous, but, like that’s possibly just because that’s the hotel he knows

John is doing something very different with his stories than his songs. To an extent they seem as much about word play than they do about articulating emotional truths. He seems to craft them differently so we can’t be sure what he was doing with any of his works

The sheer number of references in this story mean it could really be about 100 other things that you’d be able to make a case for.

This isn’t how he and Paul communicated. But, that's not to say it wasn't influenced by him. He's one of John's great loves, so clearly when he writes about love he's drawing on experiences he had with Paul (and Cyn and Yoko and whoever else).

There we have it. What do you all think? Are they about Paul? What am I missing?

#beth rambles #sky writing by word of mouth #sally and billy #mclennon #i love SWBWOM what a great title