Before the billboards, The Beatles.
Before the peace movement, the popular musician.
John Lennon’s life comprised countless chapters.
Running through them all, one constant.
The theme, love, because, to quote the man himself for a moment, love is all you need.
Here in our studio in Saunderstown, recent days have been spent searching for a mantra.
It could be that the most suitable saying has been here all along.
Suitable in its simplicity, suitable in its sentiment.
Love is all you need. It’s perfect.
Perfect as the slogan for 2012, or as it has been renamed in our studio, The OM Year of Love.
This an idea that has grown from a recent message left here on our blog, one from our friend Ron Lewis, urging us to make love our focus, our theme for 2012.
In signing off, he talks about connection.
Be the author John Lennon or Ron Lewis, such things tend to get us thinking.
Thinking about our hopes and our dreams, thinking about our endeavours and our OMs, thinking about our efforts and the things that underpin them.
Thinking about the things that matter to us here at OM HQ: connection, compassion, understanding, inclusiveness and peace.
The things that speak to us and to Ron Lewis, the things that drove John Lennon.
The cornerstone, at the heart of it all, love.
Because love is all you need.
John Lennon demonstrated as much in 1967 having been asked to create a song that had universal understanding, a lyric that all people in all countries could relate to.
The result, All you need is love, a composition that, to quote Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ manager at the time, ‘cannot be misinterpreted … a clear message saying that love is everything’.
Lennon and his bandmates, Epstein once recalled, had been keen to use their music to send a message all across the Earth. Send a message The Beatles did, a message that has long endured.
Beyond 1967, beyond Our World, the first-ever televised satellite link-up, a broadcast that united people from 25 countries, a potential audience of 400-million, the perfect arena for Lennon’s connective masterpiece to be debuted.
Beyond the fabled Summer of Love. Right through to the OM Year of Love.
That it has stood the test of time is undoubted; that it remains relevant, obvious.
Someone once suggested to John Lennon that certain songs in his repertoire could be considered little more than propaganda. He agreed. ‘I’m a revolutionary artist,’ he said. ‘My art is dedicated to change’.
This the stuff that inspires us, the perfect place to kick off 2012, a great starting point for the OM Year of Love.
It is little more than a concept at the moment, an idea persistent in our minds, one that is sure to evolve, one that requires a little more thought.
Not too much, though, because there are some things that just are, things that don’t need to be overthought. This is one such thing.

From our studio, where we too are dedicated to change . . .

Happy New Year.

Love is all you need.

We are all connected.