The 'Paul is dead' myth | Page 49 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

georgiewood said

Mademoiselle Kitty >^..^< said

{snip} And keep in mind that the human brain had a tendency to fill gaps. You may remember a thing one way, and this would be your actual memory, but it doesn’t have to be what really happened. It doesn’t make you a liar, and if doesn’t mean you’re rewriting history (something Paul is regularly accused of). It’s just the way your brain stored that event. So, maybe that’s just how Paul recalls it. {snip}

Wow, this is so good @Mademoiselle Kitty >^..^<!  Very insightful, and this simple precept explains so many seeming inconsistencies in memory and history. I used to be in the business of asking people to recount experiences from memory, and you don’t have to do too much of that to realize that people can build their own fiction which becomes a rock solid truth for them, even though it is inaccurate. They could even pass a lie detector test on these fake memories, because, to them, they are true.   

It is a truism; but it doesn’t necessarily play out with all memories; as I said before on this thread in response to Mademoiselle Kitty:  

“…not all details of the past are of the same kind and quality. A running “trolling” gag like this would surely be far more memorable than one’s choice of footwear on (admittedly) a famous day.”

She then responded that Paul wouldn’t want to admit this later on to interviewers because he would come off as arrogant.  I then said that —

“I don’t perceive it this way; first of all pop/rock musicians are already known for being out of the norm, innovators, mavericks, at times devilish. Secondly, this kind of trolling gag, seems to me, would come off more as a feather in his cap, rather than some kind of shameful thing to have to avoid with circumlocutions and evasions and fibs. “Oh, those rascally Beatles, always up to their quirky shenanigans!”

Then she said Paul isn’t in the same category as other pop/rock musicians, which to me seems like she’s presuming that the lark is/may be/could be a move of “arrogance” on Paul’s part.  My response (above georgiewood’s, last one on p. 48) was that there’s no necessity to assume such a lark had to be motivated by arrogance or ego; it could have been a fun thing all the Beatles were agreeing to.  For one thing, if all these shows of Paul’s distinction contrasted to the other Beatles (unique poses of Paul relative to the other Beatles on album covers, the black carnation in MMT, etc.) were mostly or entirely some project of Paul’s to assert his ego over the others, surely they would have resented that. And how does that work, exactly? Does Paul just order everyone around and say, “We’re going to do the covers like this — and it will feature ME in special ways unlike YOU THREE…” That seems unlikely. 

So if there was a long-running lark or gag (not ego-related, just fun for f**k sake), then it would be more memorable years later.