To George Harrison, You Still Live Among Us

Irina Pino

HAVANA TIMES — On November 29th, dawn broke with rain and trees invoking autumn. The sun replaced the rain at some point. Pain doesn’t last forever. All pain has a bright side.

Maybe it’s a way of reminding all of us who love your music and are sad because you left us on a day like this… Sometimes we have to live with our pain, but letting it ebb away slowly is the right thing to do. Love comes to everyone, this is the name of one of your songs. This phrase is real because if we love and surrender ourselves to it, love will come back to us, it will be rewarded. That’s why I always say that the time you “lose” with your friends, is time that we get back, because they need us and we need them.

Even though your death was unfair, it’s much better to evoke your life, your spirituality, your friendship, not because you are perfect, but because in the majority of your work you are; you worked hard to outdo yourself and you managed to be better and better. We are the reflection of what we want only if we fight for what we love, you can’t create without being honest, you have to be loyal to yourself, that’s essential.

Joy, sadness, the obstacles we face in art, they all compensate us in the end. Being original is the key.

Writing a book to study what you mean to me is the best gift I could give you in times of anguish, which weren’t really because you still continue to breathe among those of us who feel you and are concerned for you.

The concert you held in Bangladesh was the first fundraising concert that was ever held to help those in need. You called up your friends and you successfully managed to organize it. The problems you had in order to do this don’t matter. This act served to open up so many minds.

You shied away from fame but you paid a high price.

When I wrote my book of poems, Mientras hago el amor con George Harrison, I never thought about financial remuneration, I did it as a spiritual tribute to you.