From: dmac@julia.math.ucla.edu (saki)
Subject: Re: that damn line in sff 
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 14:58:17 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.150908.13534@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> hymowitz@whatever.cs.jhu.edu (Hymie!) writes:
>here we go again...
>
>source 1: beatlemania 1967-1970 (piano music book)
>i think i know of thee, ah yes, but it's all wrong.
>
>source 2: the beatles illustrated lyrics
>i think i know i mean a 'yes'. but it's all wrong.
>
>the line in illus-lyrics seems to make less sense to me...
>of course, that's not saying much...

It's not really meant to make sense, I suspect. It's part of the
song's lyrical genius that John captures the inarticulate unknowable
reality of the adult singer's "present"---and the protagonist's
tongue-stumbling uncertainty---which is then compared to the "past"
security in the singer's inner memories of childhood. 

To me it sounds like either "I think I know, I mean...ah, yes, but
it's all wrong" or "I think I---no, I mean---ah, yes...." Could be a
word-play with "no/know", as Michael Weiss (I believe) has pointed
out in the past. 

Listen to the way this awkward sentence wanders musically all over
the scale...and then compare it with the harmonic ease and beauty
with which the singer's notes gradually, peacefully undulate in the 
invitation: "Let me take you down/'Cause I'm going to...." In pursuit
of his childhood, the singer's diction is suddenly sure and gentle.
But he *doesn't* know, as the adult, quite what he means or how to
say it. 

SFF does a masterful job of illustrating this conflict. It's not a 
song just about Lennon's boyhood recollections. His theme is about
the desire to live one's life as a child might: with eyes closed
(ignoring the cold stare of adulthood); misunderstanding all you
see (not deliberately, but inevitably, because a child's mind often
misapprehends the complexities of the grown-up world). To John,
"being someone" (to wit, having an adult identity) "doesn't matter 
much to me". Not surprising! The memories of the child-part of the
soul are so much more inviting, offer so much more comfort, than
the demanding world of the now.

I won't even go so far as to suggest that Lennon studied linguistic
definitions of inarticulation to express this remarkable thesis. :-)
Artists rarely work that way. It seems to me that Lennon's gift
for intuitive lyrical construction is at work here. Perhaps it
was a process of subconscious imitation, through the words of the
song, of the answerless, comfortless world of maturity.

John expressed his own opinion on the song on numerous occasions;
he claimed that along with "Help!" it was his only really honest
song; and he emphasized that he was aware of how different he was
as a child and that "SFF" was partly an attempt to express how
set apart he felt from his peers. It's worth noting, too, that
"SFF" was a work of significant labor, written while John was
in Spain filming "How I Won The War", and not work that came to
him easily. 

But remember that his own life was taking severe turns in the latter
half of 1966. He knew the Beatles had stopped touring, even if the
world didn't yet; he was questioning his own choice of profession
(acting was a brief attempt to see whether he "belonged" there
instead of singing); and he was challenging the relevance of his
personal life, wondering where he would find peace and love. I'd 
venture to say that John was coming face to face with that answerless
world of the adult, and was ripe for the secure assurances of
childhood. I think that's what motivated "SFF", more than anything.

--
"What makes this foursome's history quite unprecedented is the fact that
two of the boys write (with an output rate which is prolific-plus!) all
the songs which The Beatles take to the top of the hit parade."
-----------------------------------------------saki (dmac@math.ucla.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles