Just months after moving to New York for good from England, John Lennon appeared at a December 1971 benefit gig for families of inmates killed in the infamous Attica prison uprising wearing this ‘You Are Here’ T-shirt.
The slogan encapsulated his and wife Yoko Ono’s take on life – carpe diem, seize the moment – as well as being the title of one of Yoko’s exhibitions.
Two years later, Lennon included a track called ‘You Are Here’ on the Mind Games album, prefacing the statement with ‘Wherever you are…’.
In an interview with Melody Maker he summed up his existential philosophy thus: ‘All the Bibles, Jesuses, gurus, poets and artists have ever said to people is that this minute is the one that counts; not tomorrow or yesterday.
"That's the whole game. There's no other time but the present. Anything else is a waste of time." |