Do you have any thoughts, based on Paul’s songs, about how he conceives of his relationship to John in the present? Do you think he experiences John as an active presence in his life, perhaps even one who still communicates with him? I have so many questions about that myself. I think it’s clear that he still “talks” to John, particularly in song, and maybe also that he is always looking for signals or dreams that John has heard him and is responding. This question brought to you by an Electric Arguments re-listen, when I had the thought that the entire album feels like some kind of prayer to John (and maybe Linda).
I do have a few thoughts on this, thank you for asking <3
I believe Paul, in 2026, absolutely feels John as an active presence in his life. He makes this plenty clear in Days We Left Behind. Quite like Now and Then, the title seems to indicate one thing — that the past has concluded — but the song goes on to say something totally different: “Nothing can erase / the days we left behind.”
To me, the lyric that illustrates this concept best is a bit from the final verse: “In the sky the skylarks rise above the sound of war / Since that day I knew they’d stay with me forever more.”
I do wonder what “That Day” refers to. Personally, I don’t think it concerns one specific day at all, but one of those funny temporal manipulations that Paul seems so fond of. “That day” could be 24 hours, or the 86400 moments that make up 24 hours, and there’s nothing at all to say those hours or moments must be consecutive. In fact, the word “day” comes from Old English dæg, which carries not only the sense of a measured unit of time but the idea of daylight itself. “That day” doesn’t have to be a timestamp, but perhaps an illumination, a revelation across time.
This, in turn, calls to mind what I believe to be the cumulative result of the identity work Paul has done in the wake of John’s death: the realization that the people who shape who we are never really leave us; they are part of us and so they go on with us. I obviously can’t say whether or not this persistence is literal or figurative for Paul, though my particular brand of magical thinking allows me to skirt the distinction altogether. Who among us can be certain in the face of the mysteries of the universe? That said, it does seem pretty obvious that Paul speaks to John in song, and I don’t think it’s too out there to suggest that he also listens for a response. How many times has Paul referred to the sort of psychic connection he and John shared? Is it such a stretch to believe such a connection might persist beyond mortal life?
I imagine, for Paul, this belief has come and gone in waves, as faith so often does. We can hear it as early as Here Today, and again on Electric Arguments like you mentioned, and on so many songs in-between and after, although it is interspersed with plenty of indications of uncertainty. I’m sure this process has not been a linear trajectory, though it does seem like Paul has arrived at a really beautiful understanding in recent years.
There’s been a lot of interesting discussion about the Birds of Dungeon Lane* (@bodl-gatefold is such a cool project, I highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t already), and the skylark mention in that aforementioned lyric feels really significant here.
Paul’s long love affair with written word is well established — he is a poet and a lover of poetry (I hope I don’t have to qualify this assertion). As such, English Romanticist Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem To A Skylark really informs this line, to me. It’s a very beautiful work and you should definitely read the whole thing, but here’s the opening passage:
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there
Shelley begins by suggesting that the skylark is not merely bird but spirit. Its heart is near to heaven, and thus, its art — its song — is pure. This song continues as the spirit flies higher and higher, ever onward. But its distance from earth, from mortality, does not indicate an end of life; its journey is only just beginning. Time passes, and just as a star disappears into daylight, the skylark is no longer visible to earthbound Shelley. But he believes it's there. He hears its song. He feels its presence.
That sounds like it might resonate quite a bit with our Paulie, to me.
*god I fucking wish I could footnote within a tumblr post, substack has spoiled me. Has anyone thought about boys -> birds (girls) on BODL?! I am all in on the theory that there’s far more genderplay in Beatles work than even we discuss here, and the album’s apparent interweaving of birds and boys definitely feels like Something!
