Once more, it’s winter in Maine. The pond has been iced over for weeks now, along with the road into town. Deer tracks criss-cross the snow and the wild turkeys are regular visitors to the porch, where they share black oil sunflower seeds with the jays, chickadees, and red squirrels. This morning, walking in the woods with my dog, I came upon a fallen tree, its bark newly shredded by the resident porcupine...

It was early January when I wrote these opening words, enfolded in the solitude of our little house in the woods. Spring comes late here in Maine, but as I write this, the sharp edge of winter has broken. The ice on the pond is melting, and the turkeys and birds and squirrels visit less frequently now. And I know I should re-write that opening passage to reflect these seasonal changes.

But discordant as that passage reads now, I can’t bring myself to rewrite it. Despite the signs of new life that surround me, my spirit is still in deep winter, my walks in the woods truly solitary now, because my soul dog River is no longer at my side. And because she was such an integral part of my work on The Abbey, I can’t bear to erase her footprint from these pages.

And so those opening words remain — out of sync and out of time, a small semantic tribute to the remarkable being whom I’ve loved and shared my life with for the past twelve years. River was… River is… beautiful, and important, and I am diminished without her.

Inside our little house in the woods, I’m finding a measure of solace in researching Part Two of Beautiful Possibility, which I’ve been doing since we concluded Part One. Structurally unsound stacks of books once again weigh down my kitchen table. Virtual folders of additional material fill my hard drive — among them, those 8,433 jpegs from the Northwestern University Beatles archive that I’m gradually working my way through.

So what of Part Two, you might ask?

The best answer I can offer is that I’ll begin writing Part Two in earnest when I’m reasonably convinced that nothing I might uncover in further research will significantly impact what I’ve gathered so far. That will probably — hopefully — be in late summer.

Until then, here we are, with this unexpected little series that those of you familiar with Beautiful Possibility probably don’t quite know what to do with yet. If you’re one of those people, welcome back and I’m right there with you — I didn’t quite know what to do with Seven Levels either, when it seduced its way into my life and refused to leave until I wrote it.

I say “seduced” because time and again I’ve tried to fold Seven Levels into Part Two where it seems for all the world like it belongs — and time and again, it refused to go gracefully and insisted on being its own thing. And more than that, it insisted on being in the world not later, but now. It took me a long time to understand why this is. And it will take all of Seven Levels before we have enough context to be able to fully share that reason with you.

So now that Seven Levels is here, what is it exactly? And how does it fit into Beautiful Possibility?

The answer is that Seven Levels is a bit of a hybrid. It’s part of Beautiful Possibility and also at the same time a standalone series all on its own.

As part of Beautiful Possibility, the best way to think of Seven Levels is as a bridge that we need to cross to get from Part One to Part Two. Seven Levels builds on the foundation we established in Part One, and it covers important things that we need to cover before getting to Part Two.

But while Seven Levels is a necessary bridge to Part Two, it’s important to keep in mind that the approach in Seven Levels is very different from the way we’re going to tell the story in Part Two.

So if at any point, you find yourself wondering why we’re talking about what we’re talking about in the way we’re talking about it, I ask — as I did in Part One — for your patience and your trust that we are doing things in the way and in the order in which they need to be done, and that all will be made clear in the end.

On its own as a standalone series, Seven Levels is a deep dive into the events of August 28 1964, when — according to Beatles folklore — Bob Dylan arrived at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City and introduced The Beatles to cannabis for the first time.

We’ve arrived here somewhat by accident, or maybe — in view of that whole seduction business — synchronicity. For sure, Seven Levels was not part of the grand plan.

Seven Levels began as research into “Got To Get You Into My Life” — a song that Paul says he wrote about his discovery of cannabis. It was meant to be a bit of simple research, but I should know by now that nothing about researching the story of The Beatles is ever simple.

“Got To Get You Into My Life” led to researching the Dylan story, and researching the Dylan story led to— well, we’ll get to all of that. For here, let’s just say the whole situation was like tugging at a loose thread. The more I researched, the more the canonical story of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Delmonico Hotel began to unravel, revealing another, more complex narrative hidden beneath the surface.

This deeper narrative of the events and after-effects of August 28 1964 is a story that — as far as I can tell — is untold in both mainstream and countercultural Beatles writing. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes absurd, sometimes heartbreaking, it’s a story that I’ve come to believe is essential to our understanding of Lennon/McCartney — and of John and Paul — which is probably why it was able to seduce me in the first place.

In Seven Levels, I’d like to share that story with you.

Next week, we will get properly started with Seven Levels. But before we do, there are a few things it might be helpful to know in advance to get the most out of this series.

First, it’s more of a mini-series — four somewhat-longer-than-usual-length chapters with a Wrap-Up at the end. There are no Rabbit Holes. As with Part One of Beautiful Possibility, Seven Levels will be presented in both written and audio form. In keeping with our custom here on The Abbey, new chapters will be published Mondays at 7:57 a.m. US Eastern time.

Like Part One of Beautiful Possibility, Seven Levels is not a traditional “podcast,” in which each individual episode is meant to stand on its own. Seven Levels is a book presented in written and audio form. And because it’s a book, it works best in sequence, each chapter building on the one before, until we reach the final chapter where we’ll put together all the pieces we laid out in the preceding chapters.

To make it more clear that Seven Levels is a complete work in serialised form, you’ve probably already noticed that we’re switching from “episodes” to “chapters.” This means those of you who are either amused or annoyed at the way I pronounce “episode” will have less to be amused or annoyed by, but I trust we will all make the adjustment.

Because Seven Levels is both a standalone series and also a bridge between Part One and Part Two of Beautiful Possibility, it’s both necessary and also not necessary to be familiar with Beautiful Possibility in order to engage with Seven Levels. Which of the two it is depends mostly on you.

Part One of Beautiful Possibility established the foundation for everything that follows, whether officially part of Beautiful Possibility or not. And by definition, that means everything that follows after Part One assumes familiarity with what came before.

Stepping through everything we talked about in Part One was complex and delicate work, and it took us a very long time — 29.5 hours, to be exact. And of course, it’s not practical to review all 29.5 hours of material every time we talk about something new.

It would be ideal if I could solve that problem by offering you a quick “Cliff notes”—style summary of what we covered in Part One. But I haven’t found a practical way to do that — if I could summarize Part One in a few paragraphs, I wouldn’t have needed to write it all out the way I did in the first place.

More than not being practical, it’s ethically problematic to short-stroke the delicate and complex discussion we had in Part One. And I think it would be a disservice to Paul and John — and to this work and the story of The Beatles as a whole — to try.

All of that said, I’ll do my best to offer recaps of relevant parts of Part One when it’s possible to do so in a sentence or two, either in the main text or in a footnote. The trade-off for these recaps is that “as we talked about in Part One” is likely to replace “episode” as the expression that most annoys some of you — it’s certainly annoying me. I hope those of you already familiar with Beautiful Possibility can be gracious in allowing this small annoyance as a help those who are new to The Abbey.

So if you aren’t yet familiar with Beautiful Possibility, and you can deal with not knowing what came before and with the summaries as and when they’re possible, then you will have no trouble following along with Seven Levels. If on the other hand, you suffer from fear of missing out, you might be happier if you back up and read Part One of Beautiful Possibility before engaging with Seven Levels.

And while we’re on the subject, welcome, I’m glad you’re here.

If you’re already familiar with Beautiful Possibility and you’re here mostly for further exploration of the material we talked about in Part One, I promise we will get there in the final two chapters of this series. As with Part One, we have some groundwork to lay first.

Those of you who are already familiar with Beautiful Possibility will notice that a lot of the most important material we covered in Beautiful Possibility — especially related to the relationship between John and Paul — will be notably absent from the first two chapters of Seven Levels. For those of you who are mostly here for that part of things, I’m not trying to be coy by holding this part of things back, nor am I intending to backtrack from the progress we made in Part One. It’s just that I’d like to give the new people an opportunity to get to know — and hopefully trust — my work before we dive into the deep end of the pool. So once again, I ask for your patience — we’ll get there, because of course we will.

Okay, next thing.

Some of your emails over the past months suggest to me that it might be time to remind y’all that while I am the daughter of a historian, I myself am not a historian. Nor am I a musicologist or a music critic, although some of these elements will obviously find their way into Seven Levels as they find their way into Beautiful Possibility. What I am is, among other things, a mythologist, a storyteller, a wordsmith, a former professional researcher, and a student of human behaviour — and those are the frames through which we’re going to consider the events of August 28 1964.

Next, no Preface would be complete without my traditional nagging reminder about the footnotes.

Some of you already know that on The Abbey, we do footnotes a bit differently. They’re not just source citations, although you’ll find those as well. Footnotes are an ongoing conversation between me and those of you who read them. And as such, they’re something of a community in and of themselves.

Footnotes are often where the deeper story is told, and where you’ll find research and commentary that’s a bit too spicy or speculative or snarky to include in the main chapter. Footnotes are also where you’ll get peeks into future parts of Beautiful Possibility that aren’t shared anywhere else.

Perhaps most importantly for those of you who are mostly here for the discussion of the relationship between John and Paul, for the first two chapters, that discussion lives in the footnotes.

It’s easy to include the footnotes in your reading.

You can hover over the footnote number in the main text and the note will appear as a floating pop up window, without losing your place in the text. Like this➡️.1

Or to read the footnotes all at once, scroll down to where they begin, and click the number to see where the footnote appears in the main text to get the context. Then click the number again to return to the list of footnotes where you left off. Like this➡️.2

Next, a few notes about language.

As with Beautiful Possibility, there is occasional profanity in this series, from the Fabs and from me. I have a fondness for how we went over the profanity situation in the Preface to Part One, so I’m going to repeat that same language here—

As a wordsmith, words are the raw material of my craft, and to tell this story as it deserves telling, I need all the words, not just the polite ones — in the same way that a visual artist needs all the colours on the palette. Also, to offer some perspective, when it comes to things to be offended by, profanity is fairly trivial in comparison to the offensive realities of everyday life as it’s currently unfolding — and that is even more true now than it was the first time I pointed that out. Nonetheless, if there are tiny ears involved and you’re sensitive about exposing them to the full breadth and beauty of the English language, be forewarned.

Also, Seven Levels has not been formally proofread. Good proofreading is expensive, and my budget is limited. I chose to spend it on research rather than on finding misplaced commas. So you should probably expect some typos.

My writer’s vanity also once again compels me to apologize for the inconsistent verb tenses that appear throughout this series. As with Part One of Beautiful Possibility, the story we’re about to tell veers from past to present to future, often in the same sentence, and involves people on both sides of the veil. All of which makes the consistent use of past, present, and future tense virtually impossible, and I’ve long since given up trying to sort it out. It is what it is, and we’ll all have to live with it as it is.

I also need to warn you that language will fail me a bit in our discussion about Bob Dylan introducing The Beatles to— well, that’s the thing. Unsurprisingly, we don’t have a good word for cannabis in our language that’s not pretentious or dated or square or a little silly-sounding in a piece like this.

Much of the slang and terminology we use today didn’t exist in the Sixties, and would be anachronistic. And as for the words that were available during the Sixties, I feel a little silly using slang like “weed” and “pot” and even “marijuana.” There’s nothing wrong with those words — it’s just that none of them feel natural to me. And “cannabis” sounds to me like I’m writing a business prospectus or a scientific paper.

Fortunately, the outtake of “Baby, You’re A Rich Man” on Anthology 4 saved the day. If Paul and John could ask Mal for “cannabis” while recording at Abbey Road at the height of the Love Revolution, then surely I can get away with calling it “cannabis” here on The Abbey. So “cannabis” it will (mostly) be.

Before we wrap up here, I want to offer a before-the-fact thank you. Fab research assistant Robyn has been less available due to some personal obligations. And I’m deeply grateful to the small group of volunteer researchers who have stepped up as and when they can to help research Seven Levels — especially since they were justifiably confused about what Bob Dylan has to do with Beautiful Possibility.

I’d also prefer not to wait until the Wrap-Up to offer a mea culpa apology to my friends and colleagues. Between writing Seven Levels and the existential crisis of losing River, I’ve managed over the past few months to slag off, offend or annoy pretty much every single person in my life. Thank you to all of you for allowing me to be the Holy Fool in service of my passion for this story during an extremely difficult time.

And finally, to those of you whose emails I haven’t yet responded to and who have sent in questions about Beautiful Possibility that I haven’t yet answered, Seven Levels is the main reason for the delay. Thank you for your patience and I will get to all of you on the other side of this series.

Until next week, when we will get started in earnest.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

2

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It was supposed to be a bit of simple research — but I should know by now that nothing about researching the story of The Beatles is simple.

Like tugging at a loose thread, the more I researched, the more the canonical story of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Delmonico Hotel began to unravel — revealing another, more complex narrative hidden beneath the surface.

This deeper narrative of the events and after-effects of August 28, 1964 is a story that — as far as I can tell — is untold in both mainstream and countercultural Beatles writing. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes absurd, sometimes heartbreaking, it’s a story that I’ve come to believe is essential to our understanding of Lennon/McCartney — and of John and Paul.

I’d like to share that story with you.

Seven Levels

What really happened at the Delmonico Hotel on August 28, 1964?

A bridge between Part One and Part Two of Beautiful Possibility

Series premiere, Monday, April 27 7:57 a.m. US eastern time

Preface

Chapter 1: Midnight at the Riviera Idlewild Motel

Chapter 2: Of Emperors and Princes

Chapter 3: A Taste of Acid

Chapter 4: Dangerous Speculations

Wrap-Up: Why This Series?