/// When you strip it all away there is only God

"...Maybe it was the momentum of his hectic life, in addition to my need to keep busy, but my own life began to pick up speed. Thankfully George and I didn't spend much time looking back. I mean, we weren't making scrapbooks. We were steaming ahead. Thirty years of stuffing letters, tapes and film in drawers turned the house into one enormous discombobulated archive. Having an over-developed sense of duty, and the recent deep awareness of my own mortality, I began to organize the remnants and treasures of the life George lived. It seemed so unfair to leave this task to my son and it was important to me that things be in order. It was also an obvious way of staying close to life as I knew it, not being ready to 'move on' -- as they say, a term I have come to detest.

 Half way through the treasure hunt it became even more obvious how rich a life George led. From the bin bag of reel-to-reel tapes I listened to George working out his first song, "Don't Bother Me" and Ravi Shankar giving George his first sitar lesson in 1966.

There were traces of him everywhere; chord sequences and tablatures written out, notes and silly drawings but also deeper reminders, one written on a scrap from the Bel-Air Hotel, "When you strip it all away, there is only God."

 And I have been stripping it away, from the past, as well as streamlining the present. Isn't it what we of a certain age all desire now? To simplify our lives, to get rid of some of the 'stuff' we worked so hard to accumulate so we don't spend the rest of our lives as slaves to our material world? Through work and the process of producing this film I have discovered new skills, broader perspectives, new interests and above all, I cemented old friendships while nurturing new ones. I worked hard at it all and the results pulled me out from under the cool shadow of sadness. I admit I have had a pretty amazing 10 years. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that not in a million years would I have made that trade. I have to thank George for my life with him and oddly enough, for with my life without him."

 - Olivia Harrison, Still Living in the Material World