John Lennon Interview in Rolling Stone

Watching the wheels. What are those wheels?
The whole universe is a wheel, right? Wheels going round and round. They're my own wheels, mainly, but, you know, watching meself is like watching everybody else. And I watch meself through my child too.

The thing about the child is . . . it's still hard. I'm not the greatest dad on Earth, I'm doing me best. But I'm a very irritable guy, and I get depressed. I'm up and down, up and down, and he's had to deal with that too – withdrawing from him and then giving, and withdrawing and giving. I don't know how much it will affect him in later life, but I've been physically there.

We're all selfish, but I think so-called artists are completely selfish: To put Yoko or Sean or the cat or anybody in mind other than meself – me and my ups and downs and my little tiddly problems – is a strain. Of course, there's a reward and a joy, but still . . .

So you fight against your natural selfish instincts.
Yeah, the same as taking drugs or eating bad food or not doing exercise. It's as hard as that to give to a child, it's not natural at all. Maybe it's the way we were all brought up, but it's very hard to think about somebody else, even your own child, to really think about him.

But you're thinking about him in a song like "Beautiful Boy."
Yeah, but that's easy . . . It's painting. Gauguin was stuck in fucking Tahiti, painting a big picture for his daughter – if the movie version I saw was true, right? So he's in fucking Tahiti painting a picture for her, she dies in Denmark, she didn't see him for 20 years, he has VD and is going out of his mind in Tahiti – he dies and the painting gets burned anyway, so nobody ever sees the masterpiece of his fucking life. And I'm always thinking things like that. So I write a song about the child, but it would have done better for me to spend the time I wrote the fucking song actually playing ball with him. The hardest thing for me to do is play. . . . I can do everything else.

You can't play?
Play, I can't. I try and invent things. I can draw, I can watch TV with him. I'm great at that – I can watch any garbage, as long as I don't have to move around, and I can talk and read to him and go out and take him with me for a coffee and things like that.

That's weird, because your drawings and so many of the songs you've written are really playful.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/john-lennon-the-last-interview-20101223