This may/may not be relevant, but I thought I’d share. It’s about Machiavelli in its own way. And I thought you’d get a kick out of it….

It’s from my forthcoming book “The Life and Opinions of Jay Breeze, Rock Star: or, Completeness of the Soul”:

“Tell you a story. When I was eleven or twelve, I used to mow my Aunt Barbara’s lawn every week. While I mowed I listened to a transistor radio. It was red and had a white cord with an ear plug for one ear. The cord was just long enough to reach from the radio in the pocket of my shorts to my right ear.

“I would mow and sing at the top of my lungs along with the British Invasion groups: The Beatles, of course; The Rolling Stones; The Animals; The Kinks. I had the best time, you know?

“This drove my Aunt Barbara crazy. She would call me up to her screened back porch and give me a glass of lemonade or iced tea or milk and maybe a sandwich or a piece of fruit pie. Then she would fetch a volume of The Harvard Classics and have me read to her from that to prove that rock and roll wasn’t rotting my intellect. That summer I got through Machiavelli’s The Prince and Thomas More’s Utopia. And I learned the words to “Satisfaction” by The Stones and The Beatles’ “Help.”

“And it all made sense to me. I began to think of The Rolling Stones as Machiavellian and of The Beatles as Utopian (probably because I thought Utopia was supposed to be a nice place and The Beatles seemed nicer than The Stones). Maybe that’s what’s meant by a liberal arts education.

“You know, Angel, I told Ringo this story at a party in L.A. We sat on one of those huge sectional sofas that was about a half mile long and went all along the walls of this room that had floor to ceiling windows looking out over Malibu Canyon. He just sat quietly and listened. When I got finished he said, “Imagine. A kid in a little town in North Carolina listening to us on a transistor. And now you’re here. Imagine.” Then he got up and went to pee or something.

“I have no idea what the hell it means, Angel.”

Machiavelli’s The Prince has been widely criticized as a guide to the immoral acquisition of political power. But it’s also a guide for how politicians should temper their own actions for the betterment of their voters….

This story has been submitted to Stirrdup. Your support can help it become hot….

Not saying that’s where you heard it, but that’s where I first heard it.

I could be wrong about that, but it was one of Marlowe’s plays for sure, and it was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

P.S. As a former printer from a family of printers, i appreciate the inclusion of the ISBN number.