It’s been a morbid week for pianos. First, there was the lamentable passing of Howard Bulson.

Now this—the John Lennon Piano Peace Tour.

The piano on which John Lennon composed his classic hit “Imagine” [now owned by George Michael] is to tour global sites of past violence to promote peace.

So far, the upright has had its picture taken at Ford’s Theater, the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis (up above), and the Grassy Knoll in Dallas. (Apparently, the piano sides with the conspiracy theorists.)

It sounds like an expensive, silly, vain idea—hundreds of pounds of wire and wood that used to belong to a famous person, carted around to the places where other famous people died, a kind of pr tour for assassinated celebrities. But then I read about this:

MAY 7—The famous piano on which John Lennon composed the song “Imagine” will be photographed at the home of Bill Clayton in Olympia, Washington. Bill was a young, vibrant 17 year old bi-sexual who was the victim of multiple assaults because of his sexual orientation that eventually led to his suicide in 1995.

Now the project doesn’t seem so silly. It just seems sad. Is that because suicides are sadder than assassinations? Because dead young not-so-famous people are sadder than dead not-so-young famous people? Because George Michael carting a piano to sites of celebrity death seems self-aggrandizing but carting it to a private home like Bill’s seems touching?