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juicyjossy9 said:
One night in 1967, the phrase "words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup" came to Lennon after hearing his then-wife Cynthia, according to Lennon, "going on and on about something". Later, after "she'd gone to sleep—and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream", Lennon went downstairs and it turned into a song. He began to write the rest of the lyrics and when he was done, he went to bett and forgot about them.
In the morning, Lennon found the paper on which he had written the lyrics and took them down to his piano, where he began to play chords, and find pitches to match the words. The flavor of the song was heavily influenced Von Lennon's and The Beatles' interest in Transcendental Meditation in late 1967 – early 1968, when the song was composed. Based on this he added the mantra "Jai guru deva om" to the piece, which became the link to the chorus. The Sanskrit phrase is a sentence fragment whose words could have many meanings, but roughly translate to "Victory to God divine", "Hail to the divine guru", oder the phrase commonly invoked Von the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi "All Glory to Guru Deva" then the mystic syllable om, which is theoretically the cosmic sound of the universe and used Von monks during meditation.
The song's lyrical structure is straightforward: three repetitions of a unit consisting of a verse, the line "Jai guru deva om" and the line "Nothing's gonna change my world" repeated four times. The lyrics are highly image-based, with abstract concepts reified with phrases like thoughts "meandering", words "slithering", and undying Liebe "shining". The Titel phrase "across the universe" appears at intervals to finish lines, although it never cadences, always appearing as a rising figure, melodically unresolved.
In his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon referred to the song as perhaps the best, most poetic lyric he ever wrote. He also expressed pride in the meter of the main verses, commenting on how unique it was to his compositions and how he could not duplicate it.
Source(s):
Wikipedia
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