29. Diary of an Insomniac

Date: April 12, 2023
Time on clock: 3:13am
Status: Wide Awake
Best guess as to how much sleep I’ve had tonight: 3.5 hours
Best guess as to how much sleep I’ll get the rest of the night: 45 minutes

Insomnia thoughts: If I had a time machine, I think I’d go back in time and save John Lennon from Mark David Chapman.

…But how? How would this play out? What would be the strategy for saving one of your favorite musicians from the cruelest of deaths? And why John Lennon? Why not go back and kill baby Hitler? Or if baby killing isn’t your thing, a teenage Hitler? Could you kill a pimply faced Hitler? Would he have the mustache already? …but the teenage version of that mustache in all its peach-fuzz glory? Maybe wait until he’s survived World War I and pop him in the back of the head?

Nah, you can’t do that. Killing Hitler would have way too many historical ripples that could possibly result in several paradoxical outcomes, including you never being born. Plus, you know your history. You know that Hitler wasn’t created in a vacuum and didn’t invent antisemitism. If you take out Hitler, perhaps some other, more monstrous person takes his place. And perhaps this more monstrous person doesn’t make the same military mistakes Hitler did. Perhaps he (and it would be a “he” wouldn’t it?) wouldn’t invade Russia. Perhaps he would have had his armed forces stationed on the right beaches during the D-Day invasion and with the Allied troops not being able to get a good foothold in Europe, perhaps World War II ends in a stalemate with many, many more people dying in the various concentration campus across Europe. Or perhaps World War II ends with nukes in Berlin. Or perhaps this more monstrous non-Hitler person creates the nukes himself and bombs Washington DC. Perhaps history had to play out the way it did…

John Lennon will have to do. The stakes are high but not high enough to really alter human history. In 1980, you would have already been born. Any butterfly effects from saving John Lennon from Mark David Chapman will not be felt until you’re much older.

But how? How do you stop his death? Tell me, McFly. McFlybben? Nah, that’s dumb. Don’t write that. But how? Do you go back earlier in the day and tell the police? What would you even say? “My name is Matthew and I’m from the future and the future sucks without John Lennon in it.” This isn’t Minority Report and pre-crime isn’t a thing. They’d laugh you out of the police station.

You could go back and warn John himself. Or Yoko. But going back in time and warning John and Yoko would only make you sound like a crazed-Beatles fan, therefore easy to ignore to Mr. Walrus. Plus, you’d have to fight through the emotions of seeing John Lennon alive for the first time while simultaneously sounding coherent enough with your warning that you don’t come off as just some burnt out hippie operating on too few brain cells. Not possible. He’d probably call the cops and you’d end up in jail yourself.

So how? HOW? How are you going to do this? You’re kind of anti-gun, so it’s hard to imagine you going back and just waiting near the Dakota until you see John and Yoko get out of their car and Mark David Chapman pull out his gun. Even then, you better be Annie fucking Oakley. You could have zero hesitation.  You’d have to get in there point-blank range and just pop-pop-pop. But you’re anti-gun and anti-violence, so… good luck with that?

Even if you pulled this off, you’d be arrested and what kind of paradoxical ripple effects does that open up? You already exist in this world. Your fingerprints would match the fingerprints of your already existing 3-year-old self. The NYPD would call the X-Files in and then this all gets very messy as you’re hidden in some kind of underground government cell without windows recalling upcoming events to the authorities before they happen like some kind of “B Minus Time Traveler” fortune teller. (Ben Stiller Show… underrated). You know your history but how well do you know your history? You could stop the Challenger explosion in… 1986??? January??? Yeah! January twenty-something 1986. You could definitely stop 9/11/01. You could… accurately predict a few sporting events and make some people very rich off your predictions like Back to the Future 2. You could even predict some political events. Perhaps the Reagan administration gets Oliver North to take out a certain governor from Arkansas and we end up with a two-term George HW Bush.

So guns are off the table. Maybe kiss Mark David Chapman upside the cranium with a good aluminum bat like that one Primus song. Make it go “ping!” It’d be like the end of Casino with Joe Pesci in the cornfield. But what if Mark David Chapman sees you lingering around the Dakota with a very suspicious looking baseball bat tucked away in your trench coat? He could turn his gun on you and then this all gets paradoxical again.

Even though this mission is dangerous, this mission is worth it. No plan is foolproof. John Lennon deserved a shitty 1980s. I want to hear what Lennon’s “Call Me Al” would have sounded like. It would have been just as disappointing to his prior music like that song is to Al Simon’s prior music (IT’S “PAUL SIMON,” YOU TIRED MOTHERFUCKER) but he deserved to have that shitty era just like the rest of ‘em. I want John Lennon’s version of “Kokomo.”

I just need a 1980s map of New York. And a time machine. But first, I should browse Instagram for a couple hours.