Dakota (Part One)

[Douglas Mercer]

Douglas Mercer
March 6 2025

The hint of the century


Chapman later said that before he killed John Lennon he went into a kind of coma or a vegetative state, that he was going through “the Poet’s Door, the door of William Blake, the door of Jim Morrison” which is also Aldous Huxley’s Door Of Perception wherein everything thing is cleansed and one sees infinity. Something was awry, Chapman thought, and he was caught up in it. During the days before the killing Chapman kept hearing voices telling him that it was holy and it was real. In fact, it almost seemed like something was bound to happen.

During these special moments the world goes into a kind of dream or reverie or fugue state where the normal laws are suspended. After such an event or eruption of primalling the world resumes its steady state, and analysis begins.

You know it’s the old question about whether you believe in fate. I do, and I don’t. But I don’t believe we are dragged around on strings, you know you can go off on your own little trails—John Lennon, 1980.

University of California psychologist Jay Martin has identified The Catcher in the Rye Syndrome from case studies culled from the psychiatric literature. This condition affects those with borderline personalities who have engaged in an extreme identification with the narrator of Salinger’s novel. The sufferer is a reader of this book who experiences such an extreme loss of identity and comes to believe that he is in fact the narrator of the book, Holden Caulfield. This syndrome falls under the umbrella term Fictive Personality Disorder in which a person will create an alter ego or a projection of oneself garnered from the world of novels or film and then feels as if they have simply stepped inside this new personality or become it.

There are no accidents--John Lennon, 1980

Professor Martin’s prime example of this syndrome ironically comes from a fictive world itself. Don Quixote is so drenched in reading tales of the Knights Of Old that he believes he is one of those chivalric and gallant Knights and so begins to see imaginary windmills against which he perpetually tilts. On one of the early covers of Salinger’s book there was a picture of a Knight on a horse, thus alluding to his precursor, for Holden also pictures himself as a defender of innocence, is a sufferer from schizophrenia, and tilts at perceived evils.

It was a little kid who did the killing of John Lennon. A little kid on his Don Quixote horse went charging up to the windmill called the Dakota with a tragic mission, to put holes through of the sails of that windmill of phoniness.

John Lennon suffered from schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, megalomania, delusions of grandeur, and multiple personality disorder.

Near the end of his life John Lennon reported that he was an empty temple though which many spirits pass. For six weeks in the summer of 1968 Lennon would tell anyone who would listen that he was in fact Jesus Christ. Fred Seaman reports that in the last years of his life Lennon was always raving about Jesus Christ. Lennon went to Jerusalem in 1978 and said he felt the energy of Christ and took a woman back to his hotel room to wash her feet to be Christ. When he went to Jerusalem Lennon said that for 2000 years time had stood still. Phillip Dick held the same belief, that we were still living circa AD 33. When Phillip Dick had his numinous vision of the shining Christ Fish he was listening to Strawberry Fields Forever. Dick wrote about this belief in Exegeses. In the book How The Beatles Knew the author claims that Strawberry Fields represents an eternally replicating cybernetic field.

In Bermuda in March 1980 in a mechanical voice which seemed not to come from himself Lennon predicted that he would meet a grisly death by an assassin’s bullet. He said this death was fated because he had lived such a violent life in both thought and deed. Lennon was fascinated by assassinations; spoke endlessly of the killing of Kennedy, when a father of a friend of his was shot at Lennon grilled him endlessly on whether or not he saw the bullet coming. The only person other than the principals to read Lennon's diary said one of the things which surprised him the most was how obsessed Lennon was with the occult.

Lennon said we must imagine no possessions, but he was an avid and addicted consumer, he and his wife would go on meaningless spending sprees, buy hundreds of thousand dollars' worth of goods, and then dump it all in one of their many rooms and then never look at it again. When he became a permanent resident of the United States Yoko bought him a 75,000 diamond flag pin. Chapman killed Lennon for being a phony and Todd Rundgren had a running feud with Lennon over the fact that Lennon was a hypocrite. The day he died Lennon said that he just got lost, that it was never his intention to be a hypocrite or a phony. The word phony appears thirty-five times in The Catcher In The Rye.

Lennon killed a man, raped at least one girl, and used to roll bums in Hamburg and leave them for dead. Near the end of his life Lennon said that it was a good thing he was going to be assassinated, that way his Karmic Slate would be wiped clean; whereas if he lived to be an old man he would die with his sins on his head. Upon Lennon’s murder hysteria raged in Manhattan over this “untimely death.” The most often expressed sentiment is who would want to kill this man of peace and love? After all, he had been such a wonderful man.

After John Lennon was shot outside the Dakota Apartments (where Rosemary’s Baby was filmed) the murderer was found casually reading from the book The Catcher In The Rye. He could not read it, however, as the ink was sliding all over the page. He had gone into a fugue state and the ink of the page was crawling. Chapman had read an article in Playboy about Lennon and also a book called John Lennon: One Day At A Time. This material indicated that Lennon was then worth upward of half a billion dollars and that his wife, Yoko Ono, was mastering the stock market.

Chapman identified Lennon both with the John of the New Testament and with the narrator of The Catcher In The Rye Holden Caulfield. Chapman saw Lennon as a sellout and that he had to White Knight and be the catcher the one who nobly defends the innocent against the depredations of the inauthentic. The murderer told the police officer who arrested him that he shot Lennon to promote the reading of the book and to protect children from phonies. Of course the saying goes that those were dark days for the hippies and if only Chapman had missed and Hinckley had better aim (Hinckley was another diligent reader of Salinger's book).

Holden is a Christ figure in that he catches and saves the children; in a different book Salinger identifies a mysterious figure called The Fat Lady with not just Christ but Christ himself (a phrase which is repeated for emphasis).

Fugue: In music a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts. In psychiatry: a state or period of loss of awareness of one's identity coupled with certain forms of hysteria.

Dead Men tell no tales but the ever-canny J.D. Salinger has positioned himself in a way that could be considered an historical anomaly; writing several intense books by the time he was forty and then suddenly he stopped publishing. His son claims he wrote all day every day come rain or shine for the last four decades of his life (apparently unlike God he did not rest on Sunday). So, if true, there is serious tranche on the hard drive that may one day come over the transom. Presumably it will come trickling out in either dribs or drabs during the Thirties. He will rap three times when he is ready.

Salinger worked for the OSS, and so is a classic trigger and MK Ultra figure, is said to have interrogated National Socialists and he married a National Socialist sympathizer in Germany, lost his mind at the Battle of the Bulge, was a gung ho anti-communist and an old Cold Warrior, was implacably opposed to the Beats and the Hippies. He habitually wore an Army Jacket and drove around his compound in a Jeep, turned down Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal offer on the phone to speak up as an “artist for civil rights."

Both Lennon and McCartney were obsessed by Lewis Carroll and also English Nursery Rhymes. Lennon used the cadence of three blind mice over and over and “see how they run” appears multiple times in the songs (Lady Madonna, I Am The Walrus). For the song Cry Baby Cry he used Sing A Song Of Sixpence as a template (a pocket full of rye). McCartney quotes from the Mad Hatter in Helter Skelter.

Salinger (ex-OSS) seemed to have been aligned with Regan’s anti-communism. When he drove to pick up his daughter at school once and saw her walking with the some hippies he told her never to do that, those are horrible people. He once discovered that his daughter had a peace symbol inked on her ankle and told her to go wash it off, that such an awful symbol was not allowed in his house, and then gave her a lecture about the perils of communism. After Pearl Harbor JD Salinger called the president of his former military academy and said he wanted to be enlisted right away. The President later said that he liked JD Salinger, he was funny and a good student but he was also kind of a smart alek . And so he was both surprised and pleased that Salinger was so gung ho about joining up.

At the behest of Frank Gifford in 1974 Lennon had once met Reagan at a Monday Night football game in Los Angeles, and as befits two old entertainers they got on rather well. Reagan had his arm around Lennon and was patiently explaining the nuances of American Football. In the last year of his life Lennon said he was embarrassed by his political activism and when called on to sing Imagine he was so disgusted he spat it out. He said that were he able to vote he would have voted for Reagan in 1980 (Lennon was scheduled to become an American citizen in 1982). Just before his death Lennon predicted that Reagan would be assassinated and the ex-CIA Director George Bush would ascend to the presidency.

A song by New Order called Blue Monday contains the line: I see a ship in the harbor, I can and shall obey.

On 8 December 1980 the Patriots were playing the Miami Dolphins in a nationally televised Monday Night Football game with a playoff spot on the line. The game was tied 13-13 in the final seconds of regulation with the camera panned in on English kicker John Smith when Howard Cosell broke the news to the nation that John Lennon had been murdered. Smith had made two field goals during the game but the kick was blocked and the Dolphins won in overtime. After the game there was little talk of football as the media had been swept up in the story of Lennon. Smith was one of only two English NFL players at the time. Smith was a fan of the Beatles in his youth and during his rookie hazing with the Patriots often sang Beatles songs to his teammates.

Block that kick!—repeated ten times—is the last line of Revolution Nine. Just prior to that comes hold that line!—repeated four times.

The Cather In the Rye has twenty-six chapters and Chapman said the murder of Lennon would be Chapter 27. At the Sheraton where he was saying Chapman was given a room on floor 27. When he entered the psychiatric hospital after his suicide Chapman said he felt like a boxer on the ropes in the 27th round. Chapman spoke of the event he planned to stage. Like Caulfield he hires a prostitute to come to his room and like Caulfield’s prostitute the one who came had a green dress. After the incident with the pimp Holden engages in a homicidal reverie where he riddles the pimp with bullets. He also speaks of wearing a people hunting hat. The word kill appears 64 times in Salinger’s book.

They are coming together—Time and History---they are coming together. The field is forever.

In the book Time And Again the time travel is achieved by turning an apartment in the Dakota into a sound stage where, if the traveler believes he is in the past, he really is. This is action is completed by hypnotism and autosuggestion, akin to clicking red heels.

John Lennon read Helter Skelter and said it scared the shit out of him. The book is spooky enough but as the one who sent the waves of psychic energy, Lennon was clearly privy to more details. Many people close to the Beatles wondered about the uncanny connections between Manson and the Beatles but they never published their thoughts.

Lennon spoke words hours before his death that were said to be so shocking that the person who heard them would not repeat them. In fact so disturbing were Lennon's words on the day of his death that the person who recorded the words destroyed the tape. Likewise Lennon’s voluminous diaries written at the Dakota, after being the subject of much subterfuge and legal wrangling, have never been published. Perhaps he will rap three times when he is ready.

The person who heard the mysterious words of Lennon on the day of his death said in 2010: If I told you what he said you'd think I was a nutter. There's been a lot of speculation over the years that it was something personal about Yoko. But it wasn't, it was about his death. I destroyed the tape after the murder.

In the Lennon family the Dakota was referred to as the spook house.

When the Dakota was remodeled it was done by a company called Glass and Glass. When Yoko Ono put an album on the cover of which were Lennon’s bloody glasses she called it The Season Of Glass. Aside from Holden Caulfield Salinger’s other fictional protagonist is Seymour Glass (see more glass).

The Dakota building is said to possess a kind of sinister elegance, to be forbidding and Gothic. That is it is done in the High German Style.

Peter Boyle was a friend of Lennon’s and he was in Taxi Driver which, along with Salinger’s book, inspired Hinckley to shoot Reagan. Despite the friendship Lennon would often mercilessly ridicule Boyle to the point where he would be in tears. Taxi Driver is about a psychopath who loathes the scum of New York City, and he shoots a pimp just as Holden fantasies about shooting a pimp in an elevator of his hotel. One of Lennon’s last songs was called Clean Up Time. Lennon was fascinated by Hitler and in 1971 told his Jewish manager that Hitler had been correct: you have to control the people.

Chapman was obsessed by the Wizard Of Oz which starred Judy Garland who once lived at the Dakota. The Dakota is made of yellow brick.

On the morning of December 8 1980 while in the park Chapman was putting together the Dakota-Manson-Lennon connection and Mia Farrow walked right by him into the park. At first he did not believe his eyes but someone next to him confirmed that it was Farrow. He said it is not possible that I am imagining this. Time and History were coming together, as was Synchronicity. Something was bound to happen, it had to happen.

In 1927 Carl Jung was dreaming of the Beatles, he had a dream of Liverpool which he called the Pool Of Life. He dreamed of a cave and a street which by the way he described it was later identified as the street where the Cavern Club was, the venue which made the Beatles famous in England.

Charles Manson believed that he was receiving personal messages from the Beatles’ White Album, an album so named because the cover was perfectly white. The album was originally supposed to be titled A Doll’s House after Ibsen’s feminist play.

Helter-Skelter is an adverb that means in a confused or reckless manner, it can also mean in great disorder or pell mell or haphazard. The phrase Helter Skelter is used to described something that is chaotic or in a kind of fugue or hurly burly state. The origin is from the English of the late 16th Century, a rhyming jingle of unknown origin perhaps symbolic of running feet of from the Middle English “skelte hasten.” It is also the name of a Conical English Fairground slide where a tall winding spiral wraps around a tower. One climbs up through the tower on a winding staircase and then appears at the top and then casts oneself down the slide and going round and round and wrapping round the tower until one reaches the bottom in exhilaration.

It’s coming down fast.

Sharon Tate used to have her lackeys round up young girls off the Sunset strip to be whipped sadistically and filmed. Bugliosi said there were tapes found in the attic of the Cielo Drive House which were never released.

The Beatles were recording the song The Two Of Us roughly concurrently with the murders. In the song the speaker says he is “writing letters on my wall” and the murderers wrote letters on the wall as well (in human blood). The speaker also refers to burning matches and lifting latches which is apposite of the murders. In the main recording Lennon does one of his impromptu speeches where he says I dig a pygmy by Charles Hawtree and the Deaf Aids, Phase One in which Doris gets her Oats. Pygmy contains “pig” which was written on the walls in human blood. The reference to Charles is obvious, Doris is a reference to Doris Day (another and duplicative doll) who was the mother of Terry Melcher the prime link between Manson and Tate. To get one’s oats can mean sexual congress but it sounds like gets her just deserts or comeuppance or get what is coming to her. Mark David Chapman had his first sexual experience to the image of Doris Day.

The idiom “cat’s cradle” is used to describe something that is extremely complex, difficult, or jumbled. The phrase is derived from a classic children’s game called Cat’s Cradle in which two or more children pass a loop of string back and forth between their hands to create various figures. This idiom can be interpreted in many ways depending on the context in which it is used. Some people use it to describe a complicated situation that is difficult to understand or navigate through. Others may use it to refer to something that appears simple at first glance but becomes increasingly complex as one delves deeper into it.

In the novel Time And Again (1970) there is a warehouse in Manhattan that has movie sets and actors, the idea being that if you can reconstruct a scene in your mind’s eye and self-hypnotize you will be able to time travel to the past. In the novel The Dakota is said to be a “staging area” for this autosuggestion and breaking of the normal rules of space and time. The Dakota used to house the bohemian, the odd, the offbeat, actors.

Continued at Dakota (Part Two)

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

In the film The Shining (release date May 23 1980) a character is shown reading The Catcher In The Rye. The author of the book the film is based on chose the title in reference to a lyric by Lennon "we all shine on."