My Beatle, My Gastroenterologist

Author Mark Leyner.

From an amazing interview with one of my favorite authors, Mark Leyner (conducted by Sam Lipsyte, another terrific fictioneer).

Here’s something funny, though. Last night, I was listening to the Beatles song “You Can’t Do That” and it brought tears to my eyes. I mean, big fat tears rolling down my cheeks. Because I have (and have always had) this helpless, completely homoerotic affinity for the voices of John and Paul. Maybe it’s not such a tangent from what I’ve been talking about. It’s the unified quality of that sound that gets to me. Their voices evoike for me this ever-receding paradise, the impossibility of holding on to things you love most, the evanescence of everything, all that — and it’s just heartbreakingly beautiful. I remember how people used to bitch about those crazy tapes of the Beatles at Shea Stadium, about how you couldn’t hear the music, that all you could hear was screaming, the sreaming of all those thousands of girls. But I’ve always loved that din especially–that vast, unreelenting din of screaming girls that almost completely overhwlems the sad, beautiful voices of John and Paul. That’s great. That whole thing for me is the real music.