This is completely serious, and I will preface it by saying it was the most glorious moment of my life, and that I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people on the face of the earth.

On the weekend of Jan. 6th, we basically begged the Goss gallery (in Dallas) that was holding "IMAGINE," a peace project including some of the most famous, beautiful, and heart wrenching wartime photographs of all time, anchored by having John Lennon's 1971 (I believe) Steinway & Sons upright piano on which he composed and recorded "Imagine," among other songs. In fact, when he shows the song, to what amounts to be the plastic ono band in the movie "Imagine", he is playing on that piano (which is actually on a loop on the plasma screen TV suspended above the piano so you can look at John playing it and then look down at the piano in front of you!). Anyway, we wanted a pic with it for our own devious purposes, (muahaha!) and they finally agreed! But no touching, breathing, groping etc. at the piano.

Now granted, we had all donned our 'gay apparel' for this pic, so we were fully decked out in "Beatles-esque clothing" which made us seem more than interested. Anyway, the Goss gallery manager starts talking to our manager/my Dad, who was insisting we do something to repay her for letting us take the photos. She repeats how we couldn't play a show (due to time/size constraints) here and really wish we could've set something up but with only two weeks left in Dallas for it and not enough time... but what the hell? We'll consider this a try-out of sorts and maybe bring them to Oklahoma City for the next stop... At this point I turn around from staring at the thing, as it just glows so beautifully, and she looks directly at me and says "WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY IMAGINE ON THE PIANO RIGHT NOW?"

...

I was so taken aback I nearly lost it, it took me about 5 min. to arouse the courage to touch it. Because not only is it John-F***ING-Lennon's piano, it's THE one he used to write and record perhaps one of the greatest pop songs of all-time, and the piano reigns as the most expensive piece of pop memorabilia around, at somewhere between $2.1 and $2.5 million dollars. So naturally I was scared. As soon as I was able to touch the keys I welled up and went into it.

It was indescribable. I totally expected it to sound different or slightly changed from the recording after all these years, but it sounded exactly like it, except that it's right there live like hearing him playing the song!

It was so powerful that nearly everyone in the room (the entire gallery dropped what they were doing and came in to see what the hell was going on) was in tears by the end, and I was at the head of them. I know John would probably laugh at all of us for making such a big deal out of his piano ("Justa bloody piano" I can almost hear him say), but that's as close to hearing John Lennon play live as I'll ever get.

I do hope we get to go Oklahoma City, but that one time was enough to last me forever... I've been waiting my entire life to do something like that, it was so amazing. I just thought it would be worth sharing with everyone!

That's why I now consider myself one of the luckiest guys on the face of the planet.