Pattie Boyd, George and Eric
Having been once passionate of British Rockers: Beatles, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd, I read with interest excerpts from Pattie Boyd’s biography on her life with George Harrison and Eric Clapton. The acute pathos of these three and other connected lives touches me at the core.
Pattie Boyd has written the autobiography impartially yet I sense that she is not aware of the acute pain she delivered to George in whose knowledge she allowed herself to be swept off her feet by the passionate advances from George’s best friend, Eric. She keeps highlighting the coldness of George but she cannot hide that the apparent coldness was a cover for the acute pain that George had to undergo when his silent sweetness was overpowered by boisterous declarations of love, and especially when the source of pain was his own wife and his best friend.
Pattie describes a tragic situation when George, apparently as a last resort, confronted Eric in a duel of guitar playing in their house. Both George and Eric were stoned but, as Pattie describes, the duel gave rise to electrifying mad music which ended with no verbal decision but a tacit understanding that Eric was the clear winner. Pattie writes that Eric was not riled and with utmost calm demonstrated his superiority (and probably Pattie chose the winner). Pattie has narrated a few escapades of George during this period, but it is so obvious that all these escapades were George’s frantic attempts to bring her back.
Knowing that nothing ever happens without Lord’s wish and knowing that puppets do not have much leeway, I see no blame in anyone. But George attained calm, whereas both Eric and Pattie went from wilderness to wilderness. Eric successfully used the manic energy that Pattie generated in him to earn a name as the supreme guitarist of all time but has he got peace? Pattie, who obviously neglected to love herself but sought love in glamour, was rejected and neglected brutally by Eric very shortly and led a tragic life thereafter.
On the other hand, Harrison truly turned out to be a son of Hari – a loved disciple of Krishna. He remained a sweet friend to both Eric and Pattie – and this is true love. It was not in his nature to bear grudges. Such people of course go through a lot of subjugation at the hands of brutal egoists of the world, especially in the western world, where brutes are ranked higher.
But Hari cares. This be my tribute to silent George.
Om Namah Shivaya
That which is without letters (parts) is the Fourth, beyond apprehension through ordinary means, the cessation of the phenomenal world, the auspicious and the non-dual. Thus Om is certainly the Self. He who knows thus enters the Self by the Self.
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