November 1984
New York City
Q: We crossed out death on our list.
YO: Yes, we have rather exhausted that subject, I think. I’m not
going to say “no” to any issue. In other words, don’t worry
about it, it just scared me when I saw the list, but you know,
if you just ask me naturally, it doesn’t hurt me. It will be
like a Rorschach test. When you say something, something comes
to my head, I’ll say it-so don’t worry.
Q: Okay, the first subject area is music and art, and the basic
question is, what do you think the sources and/or purposes of
music are?
YO: Well, all right - I can only talk about myself. I don’t know
what the purpose of music is, but I know what the purpose of
music is for me. For me it’s a way of expressing myself-and
sharing my feelings with other people. And I think that,
basically, because I’m a shy person - which will never be
believed - I’m not very good at, or shall we say I’m awkward in
expressing my true feelings to people-whether it’s to one, or
the world. And it comes easier for me when I do it in music. And
that’s how I do it.
Q: Obviously, at some point there must have been a decision on
your part or a sudden revelation that it was music that was your
way of expressing yourself?
YO: To tell the truth, I’ll tell you the truth, when I was four
years old my mother sent me to school where you got the perfect
pitch and piano lessons, one of those schools where a first
assignment was to compose a song. And my old classmate … I
bumped into her on the street in Japan much later, and she said,
“Hey, I still have your song:’ And I said, “What song?” You
know, I was thinking that maybe she got my record or something.
She said, “No no, when you composed it, you know, in school when
you were four years old:’ “Wow, could I have it?” I said. Of
course, I never got it from her. I was writing songs, just as
all the other children were, it’s nothing special, and they used
to have, once a month or something, a show for the parents -
they used to have a little concert for parents to come see how
their children were doing. And I was so nervous before I went on
the stage, I started to have this strange tummy ache, and I
threw up. I went on the stage, and I came back, and I threw up
again. I remember that. I was particularly small- many physical
aspects of me they always think of as a Japanese thing, but not
necessarily, I was even small for a Japanese and so this tiny
thing comes on stage and starts to sort of climb up on the chair
to try playing the piano-of course it’s funny, so they all
laughed you know. But the thing is, I took it as an offense, you
know what I mean Oh, they’re laughing at me. These days when I
see a two-year-old saying something so cute I try to control
myself not to laugh because, I mean, they take it differently
you know. Why are they laughing at me? So I remember
specifically that I was feeling terribly embarrassed because
everybody was laughing, and I was playing the piano. It started
then.
It was not my decision, in a way.
I continued the piano lessons until my father, who’s actually an
incredible pianist-was an incredible pianist-and it was when I
was twelve or thirteen. I was too shy to play the piano in front
of my father because he’s a good pianist, but I wanted to tell
him how I was progressing, so when he was in a room, I would go
and play in the next room just to let him know that I was
working. One day I was playing the piano, and I heard my father
say to my mother, “She’s never going to make it as a pianist:’
And I thought, “He’s right:’ He was quite disappointed because,
well, my father had made an appearance as a pianist, and he got
good reviews and all. Well, I don’t care if he got good reviews
or not but the main thing was he was a brilliant pianist, and
when he was about twenty-one, I think, his father died, and in
the will the wishes were that my father would not become a
pianist but would go into banking as his father had. And that’s
a heavy trip. So anyway, he became a banker instead, and he’s
one of those pianists who’s always playing the piano at home.
When I was born, my father wanted me to be a pianist so badly. I
was the first born, didn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy. So
he’d be sort of looking at my fingers and asking me to do this
or do that, trying to see if I had good hands for a pianist. It
was like that from the beginning.
When I was fourteen, I made a big announcement that I wanted to
be a composer not a pianist, and my father was listening very
carefully, very silently, and said, “Hmm - well I think that’s a
mistake:’ I said, “Oh, why?” Not only had I mustered my courage
to announce that I’m not going to be a pianist, but I want to be
a composer! He’s one ofthose very classic persons, believes in
the three big Bs, you know, Brahms, Bach and Beethoven, and all
three ofthem happen to be men, as he politely mentioned. He
thought that music composition, in a word, is a field that’s too
hard for women. And he thought that I had a good voice, and
maybe I should go into opera, maybe I can sing at La Scala. For
women it’s an easier thing to do - to sing somebody else’s
songs, etc. And I know that my voice became a joke in this
society, so people are going to say -oh, no! But I had an
incredibly good voice then, which was when I was around
seventeen or eighteen, and I had instructors who would say that
I could probably make it as an alto, or mezzo-soprano, so I
started opera. I started to dislike it so intensely. I was
supposed to go to music school to study voice, and then
eventually go to Italy. I thought, there’s something wrong with
it. I didn’t enjoy singing other people’s songs. You know, I
like good German lieder and all that, they’re beautiful,
beautifully written, I respected all that, but I had an urge to
compose.
So instead of going to music school one day I made an
announcement. And this really was an announcement because my
father was in New York at the time, and I had to send a telegram
saying - “Gave up on taking music school exam, going to
university, would like permission .. :’- and my father said, -
“If you really want to give up it’s too bad, but .. :’ - and so
I went to the university, the philosophy department. I was
happier then because, you know, I was a bookworm and it’s nicer
just to read books. Then when I went to Sarah Lawrence, I again
picked up on composition, and it was pretty nice, I wrote some
songs there, and at the time my heroes were the twelve-tone
composers, you know-Schonberg, Berg, those people, and I was
just fascinated with what they could do. I wrote some
twelve-tone songs, then my music went into some sort of area
that my composition teacher felt was really a bit off-the-track,
and one day-as ifhe were exasperated - he said, “Well look,
there are some people who are doing things like what you do, and
they’re called avant-garde:’
Of course, I came from Japan, I didn’t know anything about
avant-garde. That’s the first time I heard John Cage’s name. I
thought my composition teacher was just saying, “Get off my
back:’ I wasn’t even paying much attention to what he said. And
Stockhausen, too, I think he was mentioned. Just by chance
though, I met Cage afterwards in New York City at a lecture at
Columbia University. He was attending the lecture as well. We
were sort of introduced. That was in the late fifties, if you
can extend your mind back to the late fifties.
THE STRIP-TEASE SHOW
In Kyoto, I had a concert at Yamaichi Hall.
It was called ‘The Strip-Tease Show”
(it was stripping of the mind).
When I met the High Monk the next day, he seemed
a bit dissatisfied.
“I went to your concert:’ he said.
“Thank you, did you like it?”
“Well, why did you have those three chairs on the
stage and call it a strip-tease by three?”
“If it is a chair or stone or woman, it is the same
thing, my Monk.”
“Where is the music?”
“The music is in the mind, my Monk.”
“But that is the same with what we are doing, aren’t
you an avant-garde composer?”
Grapefruit, Yoko Ono,
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964).
I gradually got into the avant-garde or whatever you call it. At
the time I was married to Toshi Ichianagi. He was a classical
composer who studied in the Juilliard School of Music. He was a
scholarship student there. I was not attending the school but I
used to go to the school library and read the scores that I
would then do at Sarah Lawrence. Toshi was one of those
composers who got prizes every year. You know, it’s very
discouraging to see somebody who is like that. He got the
Copland prize, and … I don’t know, every year he got those
prizes. It just comes to him. He’s like a child prodigy type who
started very young, you know, one of those. Well, when I met
John Cage I thought-oh this is it! And I said to Toshi, “Do you
realize this is it?” “Well, I’ve got two minds about that,” he
said, because he’s sort of in the classical tradition, though
his music now is very avant-garde. But anyway, John Cage was a
bit too extreme for him. Then, later, he got into it too. For
me, from then on it was a lot of avant-gardism, you know, for
many years- until I met John, I suppose. That was 1966. But all
that time I wanted to write songs because I’m a poet as well,
and it combines the two. Even in the avant-garde where they
didn’t believe in lyrics, I used to do voice experiments. Now,
at the time, it was not well accepted even in the avant-garde
because the New York avant-garde was into cool art, not hot. And
what I do was too emotional. In a way they thought it was too
animalistic. They were into controlling. They used to control
the voice, rather than letting it out. And then I went to
London, and I was making films and all that, and I met John.
After London I went to Paris, and I was still doing little
things in little theatres, and I met Ornette Coleman. Ornette
got interested in my voice experiments and said, “I’m invited to
do a show in Albert Hall and maybe you’d like to join me?” I was
in Paris, and I was having fun, so I wasn’t going to go back to
London. Also I had had bad experiences before when people said,
well do you want to do your voice experiments in my concert or
something, they just used me as an instrument and forgot that it
was my composition. So I said, “Listen, if your band is willing
to play my composition, then I’ll do if’ So he said, “Of course.
It’s your composition:’ So I went to Albert Hall with Ornette,
and I wrote my instructions for them, and that instruction was
in the program, I think Ornette still has it. Anyway, it had
some four-letter words in it, or whatever it was- I think the
word was “penis,” and that’s a five-letter word.
What happened was the Albert Hall tried to threaten us that
they’re going to close the show because they thought it was
obscene. So while we were performing, these people started
coming around the hall. I was lucky we were able to finish the
concert. It was really funny because Ornette was really into
this voice experiment. It was great. He told his band to play
it, and just imagine that this jazz band will have to play it
the way some sort of kooky girl says to play it. They had some
objections, but they respected Ornette, and he said, “Just play
it like what she says:’
Yes, so it was. The way I got into it was, in 1963, when I was
in Japan,
I thought about doing the “Bottoms” film. I went to England to
do the film; well, not to do the “Bottoms” film, I went there,
and I did the “Bottoms” film. It’s just a coincidence that it
happened there. In London, everybody was talking about the
“Bottoms” film. It was so outrageous. Everyday I’d see in the
newspapers some joke about the “Bottoms” film. Then I thought,
well, I’ve done it all in London, so I went to Paris, but then I
came back for the Albert Hall thing, and when I finished I
thought, I want to stay just a couple of days, and then when I
went back to my apartment I noticed the piles of letters from
John, he was in India then. So I was sort of hanging about in
London for a while, and then John came back from India and
called me. If I hadn’t gone back to do the Albert Hall concert,
we probably would not have gotten together again.
Q: That’s on an album, right?
YO: Yes, Plastic Ono Band by Yoko Ono.
ON FILM NO.4
(in taking the bottoms of 365 saints of our time)
spring 1967
This film proves that anyone can be a director…
I’m hoping that after seeing this film people will
start to make their own home movies like crazy.
In 50 years or so, people will look at the films of
the 60s … I hope that they would see that the 60s
was not only the age of achievements. but of laughter.
This film, in fact is like an aimless petition signed
by people with their anuses!’
from Grapefruit by Yoko Ono.
Q: Then you did a lot of music with ]ohn. Were you still doing
music by yourself, and with other people?
YO: In 1968 spring, John and I finally got together. And from
then on I don’t think I performed with anybody else. It was just
a totally different situation. We got together in such a way we
felt very exclusive about each other. I think there was still
one concert at Cambridge that they had asked me to do before I
got together with John. And then, when we were together, they
called me back saying, “Are you still going to do that one?” So
I said, “Okay, I have to do this one, John, because I promised
them and all that:’ So he said, “You should do it, and tell them
that you’re coming with a band, okay?” And he was the band. It
was a surprise, you know.
Q: Then you were writing songs, more exclusively as songs?
YO: Well, in London around 1967, I was writing songs too, and I
was doing some voice experiments. But then, I think Island
Records wanted to sign me up, and I went to John and told him,
because we knew each other then, and he said, “Well, sign up
with Apple? And I was saying “Maybe, maybe?. But when we got
together, of course, we did do that. I didn’t sign up with
Island Records because, in those days, I don’t know why, but I
was very busy and doing so much that I’d forget those things- I
mean signing and things like that. Even with the “Bottoms” film.
There was a film festival in Belgium in 1967, the Kuokke Film
Festival, and they invited me to show the “Bottoms” film. You’re
supposed to sign some document to register for the festival
first, and I forgot that part of it. So I went to the festival,
and they showed my film and some of the judges came from America
obviously, and they said “We were determined to give you a
prize, but we can’t because you didn’t register?.
Q: Could you talk a little about what you were doing with the
voice experiments? Did you have certain ideas you were trying
out or were you just doing whatever happened?
YO: Well, some of it happened accidentally. In 1960 or ‘61, in
New York, I did a concert of my compositions in Carnegie Recital
Hall, and I was going to do some voice experiment in that. I was
already doing voice experiment in the sense of all that sort of
moan and groan, but in those days, I was playing around with a
tape recorder, an old-fashioned tape recorder, you know, where
you can record and rewind it. And rewinding, playing it
backwards, my voice was even more interesting. Instead of going
[vocal sound], it goes [vocal sound], you know-sort of
backwards. The beat is on a different place. And I said, this is
interesting. This is beautiful! So I did that in Carnegie
Recital Hall, in the dark. And people were saying, “Somebody is
screaming or moaning:’ Jill Johnston wrote the review, in the
Village Voice. That’s all they noticed. Then when I got together
with John - and John’s group is like “rockers” -we’d go on stage
and John would just say, do your own thing, come on, we’ll just
play behind you. Now, the ”rockers” are using electric guitars
and it’s loud. I’m just a voice so give me a chance.
I’d have to shout over it. That’s how that got started.
It was just a fusion. A free form. John’s doing his thing,
electric guitar, and I’m singing. It became like a duet. Now,
you should listen to Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band, which is an
experimental album, the Ornette thing is in it. Listen to the
first cut, “Why? That’s an incredible track, even if you listen
to it now. I mean, you can just put it in your disco club and
people can dance to it. That’s Ringo playing the drums, Klaus
Vorman playing the- bass. John’s doing the guitar. The kind of
thing John’s doing with the guitar is like a dialogue with my
voice. So incredible. Nobody did it before. John and I thought,
“We did it, we did it!” and we felt like we’d conquered the
world.
So then the album comes out, and we get all these letters with
photos of a big garbage can saying “Yoko Ono’s record, we put it
in here? That sort of response. And John’s saying, “Well, it’s
sort of understandable that they didn’t understand you, but why
didn’t they notice my brilliant guitar playing?” And of course
he’s right. But sadly, you know, because of me, nobody would
listen to his guitar playing. I felt sorry for him about that.
I was sort of a hindrance and no one wanted to listen to the
track, but he did incredible guitar playing. The kind of thing
we were doing then was all improvisation. And because I was into
that, I’d say to him, “Listen, we’re not going to rehearse
anything, this is my game, all right?” So, we’re doing that and
he was right into it, and he did better than any avant-garde
artist I know in this town, okay? And it’s just the meeting of
the two minds, or the meeting of the two fields, or two
countries … or the two worlds, that’s what happened between
us. It was just incredible.
It’s like music between some kind of contemporary jazz and rock,
and the avant-garde. It made us very lonely - for being such a
couple.
And I kind of wish, now that I see it in hindsight, I kind of
wish that they had let us just go on with that. But, artists are
very sensitive people, they’re not just animals like you expect
them to be, we were sort of sensitive to criticism, and
applause. If the whole world is hating it, and putting it in the
garbage can, we’re not going to make it, thank you. So it
dwindled in our minds. That sort of inspiration and excitement
faded.
So we didn’t do very much of it, and whenever we’d do anything
in the studio, engineers would just go to the toilet or
something. And we’re looking around - “Oh, the room’s empty? In
“Why,” right after we’d finished, you hear John saying, “Are you
getting that?” It’s on the record. He said it because he was so
worried that they might have again missed it, that they hadn’t
recorded it.
Q: Did they think you were just fooling around?
YO: Sometimes they might have thought we were fooling around,
sometimes they might have thought they couldn’t stand it, so
they’d go in the bathroom. Sometimes they might have thought,
“Oh, it’s Yoko’s, forget it?.
I don’t know. Maybe a mixture of those feelings. So John and I
were fighting against those odds.
Q: It was so new that no one could hear it.
YO: Now it’s not new at all. You play “Why” and think, “Huh,
good disco?.
Q: But everyone has been influenced by what you were doing.
YO: Well, I wouldn’t claim that. It’s more coincidence, and
accidents, and all that. Everything in the world happens like
that, it’s just chance. You know, it’s just by chance, so I
can’t claim originality or anything, just like I told you how my
voice happened because the electric guitar was too loud. So to
compete with that you start doing this. In one of the pieces I
think I realized that I can sing three notes at the same time,
which again I’m not doing by controlling it or anything. I just
started doing it, and I said,
“Oh, this is great!” And later, one of those doctors who checks
your throat said, there’s a little sort of pea-sized something
on my vocal chord, and maybe that’s the reason. From an early
age I could sing a very wide range like alto, mezzo-soprano,
coloratura soprano-a big range, and I knew that. But then I
didn’t know that I could do two notes or three notes at the same
time. And when we found out about that we were very excited. So
there’s some songs in the Plastic Ono Band album, if you listen
to it you’ll hear the voice going like a harmonica, you know,
three sounds.
So all that happened because these two particular people met.
And we were very thankful about it. If the world just, just let
us be, and gave us the space to be, we’d have been great
partners. Our partnership was still great, but mainly our
energies were used in fighting the world from splitting us. And
finally they succeeded, they split us in this big way. And if
they had allowed us- I mean in 1980 we were full of it so we
were thinking, all right, next is a musical on Broadway. We
planned it all. There’s a lot of planning that we did. We didn’t
get to do any of it. But also, what if we did, what of it? I
have a feeling that there would have been a lot of antagonism
still.
One of the reasons we went on, and were able to do things at
all, was we maintained a kind of extreme naIvete. Whenever we
discovered something that we thought was great, we thought the
world was going to say, “Great!” After all that, you know, the
different times when they knocked us. “This is great, we have to
do it, let’s do it, yeah!” And then, “Uh-oh, remember that one?
It was like that. So we went on. I don’t know why. I mean, with
Double Fantasy we thought we made it this time, now they will
understand because the time is right. And the first review we
got was, “Do we want to hear love stories again from John
Lennon?” They didn’t understand any of this. It was the
man/woman dialogue and all that, and now people understand it.
So John was saying, “Well look, you’ve been in this record world
for ten years now, and you were my partner for ten years, and if
you were a guy they would have by now recognized that you’re
great. But you’re a woman, and you’re a wife? and all that. And
then he was saying,”Wait a minute, wait a minute, shall we
announce that you’re actually a guy? That may do it!” That’s
what he was saying in 1980. “You can get away with it,” and he
was looking at me strangely, you know. That’s funny.
Q: How much do you think the antagonism had to do with certain
things you represent like the merging of East and West, female
energies being encouraged, and John’s part in that. Do you think
your ideas were what people were against, and maybe they were
taking it out on the music?
YO: Okay, I think a lot of things came together. One, they
didn’t like the fact that supposedly I broke the Beatles up;
two, they didn’t like the fact that I was a woman. I was an
oriental woman, I was eight years older than him, I was doing
music that was not particularly charming or acceptable, and
also, John and I were facing the world saying “We’re partners,
equal partners, and how dare you?” But I think that maybe the
main reason is that the things we were doing artistically were
not quite acceptable to people at the time. That has a lot to do
with it.
Also, my attitude was - I came from the avant-garde where you
know, who was it, Jonas Mekas or somebody said, “If the audience
stays it means that your concert was not successful. If they
walk out it means you were successful? I came from a totally
different tradition, so I didn’t care, really. But then I think
it was beginning to bug me too. It’s not much fun to make
records and be- well, not communicating, not circulating,
because people don’t buy it, simple as that. We tried to sort of
stay on a kind of balance, a good balance of not being too
extremely bored, maybe stick one song in that we liked very much
because it’s a great advance.
We tried, but still it wasn’t acceptable.
Q: And now the avant-garde is so rock-oriented.
YO: Oh, I know. And it’s just as acceptable as can be. And in
rock too, it’s more experimental, everybody’s doing funny tape
things. Oh now it’s very experimental, but we started a long
time ago, it was a different attitude then. Now I get letters
saying, “Your thing is too middleof-the-road, what are you
doing, we want to hear you screaming?.
Everything has changed for women, too, in a certain way, but
there still aren’t very many women composers. There are a few
more, and there is more of an openness to accept them.
I’m sure there were many many women composers in the old days as
well, though there must have been some self-censorship and
intimidation and all that, so there was not really a conducive
environment to grow in. We just don’t hear about them. Or we
hear about them as wife of a famous composer or something. Her
piece might be known as that composer’s piece or something like
that. John was a very macho guy when I met him, or before I met
him. I know the kind of macho ism that he was surrounded with
… in his environment- his nature itself was not very macho, he
was a sweet, sensitive person but he was in that society so he
didn’t know any better- and when he met me, and when he saw the
society attacking me, I think his sort of knighthood side came
out. And he observed it all, so then he realized what it is for
women in this world. And that did a lot of good really - for him
to understand feminism. He was a real feminist, you know, and he
read a lot of books about it. He was a bookworm too. He read all
of it and he understood it all. He was constantly encouraging
me, always behind me. I spoke about the discouragement we got
from the world as a couple, but at home I was very encouraged.
And that really helped me. It was a great working relationship.
Q: And you weren’t being competitive, which is a problem some
people have.
YO: I hear that, but you know in our case, because I was such an
underdog - I mean society-wise - he was not feeling competitive
about my position in society or anything, obviously. And also,
his caring side, the protective side came out because of my
position. In that sense, it was like the prince meeting the
pauper, or one of those flower girls in the street. On the other
hand, if there was anything to learn from me or learn from being
with me, he cherished it. And I cherished learning from him too.
So it worked out very well in that sense. We had a healthy
competition, of course, a kind of healthy competitive feeling
that you can only call inspiring. If it was a situation where it
didn’t inspire you to do anything, I mean, that’s terrible.
And in that sense, we used to always say - “Okay, well, I’ll do
this,” … “Oh, well I can do this,” and top each other. It was
great. And maybe because we were so isolated, and we felt that
the pressure from the world was so great, we felt very strongly
that, if we become enemies with each other then what is left?
We’re two lonely people. So we just huddled together.
Q: I have been strongly affected by the stories in your songs
and would like you to talk about them. I get a strong sense of
universal epics that your stories are part of.
YO: Somehow all the things that come out of me-like words or
music or whatever-seem to be not my doing. It just comes in and
I immediately write it down, and I catch it if I can. If I
don’t, it’s not there. So the activity is something comparable
to psychic understanding or mediumship. It comes from somewhere
else, and I’m just catching it. When it comes it’s very quick.
Q: So you’re a receiver, or a transmitter?
YO: In a way - I don’t think of it as talent necessarily. I
think of it like a good radio. You can turn the channel and all
sorts of things come. And I have an antenna that’s sticking out
there, and this antenna’s catching something. It’s a big opening
that’s open to the stratosphere. It’s easy to come in and come
out, there’s no blockage. That’s the way I feel about it.
And I think observing how John created all sorts of things, John
was like that too. When a message comes he jumps up in the
middle of the night, “I better write it down? He’s got the whole
song down, that’s how it was. A lot of people say things like,
“Why didn’t you write songs together?” We rarely wrote together,
and we also very rarely sang together. What we found out when we
tried to write a song together was that it comes so quickly,
things come so quickly from me and from John, we don’t have time
to discuss it. We’d say, “Okay, shall we write this?” And I’d
start saying, “Well, okay, this this this and this? “Oh, you
wrote the whole verse, that’s not fair, we’re supposed to write
it together? So then he’s like that too, he writes the whole
thing. I say “Well, aren’t you going to give me a chance?” “It
just came to me, I’m sorry? So it doesn’t work. It immediately
becomes two songs or three songs. There was no point in trying.
He can write very well, thank you, by himself, and I can too. We
just respected each other for each other’s writing. We helped
each other in the sense of stimulating each other for writing
certain things - it was inspiring in that sense.
Q: Are you continuing to write other things, essays and stories
… like the parable of the little boy and the crystal ball from
the inner sleeve of the album “Every Man Has a Woman”?
YO: “A Crystal Ball” was written because I wrote “Surrender to
Peace”. When “Surrender to Peace” came out in the papers, I
suddenly got tons of letters from one high school. I was
thinking, “What is this, what’s happening at this high school?”
I found out they had a social science class where as a project
the teacher read “Surrender to Peace” and the homework was to
write a letter to me about what they thought of that. So they
all wrote to me, and I thought I can’t answer all these letters,
each one of them. Then, I was just sort of inspired to write a
story, and I wrote this story, and sent it to them saying, “This
is in reply to your letters”.
I wrote a few others, around that time, I don’t know if you’ve
read it, but I sent one to the Berkeley Fiction Review. It was
this year or last year.
I wrote that story and people asked me, “Why did you send it to
Berkeley Fiction Review?” I said, “Well, because they asked me!
I have so many little bits and pieces. When I write I get so
inspired that I want it out right away, and I’d send it to all
sorts of papers-they wouldn’t mind printing something like, “Oh,
Yoko’s eating hamburger and wasn’t she a vegetarian?” - but they
don’t want to take my writing. So I got sick and tired of that
game. I have it piled up now and when somebody asks, I just send
it.
Sometimes the timing is so right, it’s uncanny. Like with Milk
and Honey, I tried to put it out in ‘81, ‘82, ‘83, it just
didn’t work out for many reasons. It finally came out in January
1984, and then I found out that this year was the twentieth year
of The Beatles, fifteenth year of the “Bed-In?”, eighteenth year
of our meeting, John and I. They’re all sort of telling me about
it, MTV calls me and on top of it, it’s 1984, and there’s an
Orwellian suggestion in it as well. So in 1984, us singing “milk
and honey” and “I love you” is a revolution, you know, because
George Orwell said we’re not going to be saying I love you to
each other, right? But we’re still saying it, even though one of
us had to die. I mean, it’s that serious, George Orwell was
almost right. Human love and spirit can’t be killed that easily.
It turns out that luckily there were tapes and because there are
tapes, we’re still saying “I love you”.
Q: Did anything like that happen with “Walking on Thin Ice”?
It’s such an important song.
YO: Well, I wrote that song in a car coming back from Cold
Spring Harbor to New York. Cold Spring is sort of like a country
home. I got in the car and I just thought of a song and I said,
“Quick, give me some paper, give me some paper! and they just
gave me a little scrap of paper. I started writing it, but then
I couldn’t write the score yet so I just rushed in, literally,
to that piano and wrote the score on that little piece of paper.
And that was it. Then, when we were going to record I thought,
but I want, not just the song, I want a little … I want to
push it a little further, experimentally. So I was thinking
about Alban Berg, in one of his operas, you know, where a drunk
is going “ahaahaahaa!” Just sort of saying things, but saying
things in such a way that the emphasis is all wrong, distorted.
So today is the recording and you’re going to sing, I thought,
okay, and then I sort of … I was lying down on the couch and
resting before the recording, and then I saw the lake flash in
my mind, a beautiful lake. And I said, okay, well, something
like that. And I went to the studio, and they’re starting to
play the track so they can overdub my voice you see, and while
they were rewinding the tape, I just wrote that thing about “I
knew a girl” and all that. And I said, “When you finish the
song, just reel on? They said, okay. And it just came into my
head about “I KNEW A GIRL” as if you - you know, usually you
say, “Iknewagirrl”, “I KNEW A GIRL,” like sort of what’s that?
And I loved it. That’s how it came into my head, so I did it
that way.
And when I came out of that booth, John said, ”When did you
write that? You didn’t have that when we were leaving Dakota
today. I said, “I just did that now! He said, “Oh, great, I love
that thing about- ‘and all this was ice’ because then the lake
… ” You see he’s thinking of the lake-“and all this was ice?
you feel it. [vocal sound] And he kept saying that he loved the
song, both of us loved the song.
And we never thought anything would happen to us. So that Monday
we were going to remix it, and all weekend he was just listening
over and over again to “Walking on Thin Ice” and I was feeling a
bit eerie, because “Walking on Thin Ice” is an eerie song. And I
wake up in the morning, and I see him still playing it, watching
the dawn and all that in New York, and he’s playing it. And I
say, “What are we doing, what are we doing?” He’s just sitting
there listening to it for the twentieth time or whatever, and I
was thinking - afterwards - I was thinking, “What was that
about?” Because the song says it all. But I didn’t know that,
and he didn’t know it, and we thought it was just a story.
Q: Maybe it was a preparation.
YO: I don’t know what it was really, but it’s very strange. He
died that day and he was carrying the finished tape.
By 1980 both John and I knew a lot about the effects of our
music, because John basically was The Beatles and all that. You
see, when you write words and when it communicates on this level
or the level that The Beatles communicated, each word has such
an impact, it brings back karma right away. So he wrote the song
called “Instant Karma,” you know. The karma is very instant.
Q: Because so many people are affected?
YO: Yes. Sometimes it works for good, like if you have that
communication power then you can change the world - if you have
a bigger communication power than us, probably you can change
the world in one minute maybe. So it’s a degree, a matter of
degree, because they, The Beatles, communicated so much. So
let’s say if there was one negative word in it, you know, that
creates such a negative karma. You don’t know how, but it does.
So we were very careful about saying things or writing things.
And some critics don’t realize the power of it, so then they
say, “Oh well, we don’t want to hear everything goody-goody
again? But we have to ignore those few critics who are cynical
because when it’s on that level, it affects everybody. And not
only the people who buy the record but the person who listens to
the radio, who happens to hear it because he’s in a car or
something. So you have to be very concerned about that. But
then, you know, you get tired of being goody-goody, and you want
to be real sometimes. Both of us actually liked songs like
“Walking on Thin Ice”. We were at home with that sort of song -
more than maybe “Beautiful Boy”.
Q: “Beautiful Boy” was a different emotion, it was beautiful and
good.
YO: But we’d get into sort of punky or funky feelings that feel
good too. Then it’s a dangerline. It’s really like the
tightrope, you know, it’s the thin ice. Dangerline. And that’s
why that weekend I didn’t like the fact that we were listening
that much to that song. And it’s a trap you get into, you keep
on saying, yes, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s peace and
love, etc. But then you’re human, so you just say something
-about death or something, I don’t know-something to do with yin
and yang, and you want to say something that’s not always
sunshine … a shade darker. And then it sort of like affects
you, affects your fate even. That’s incredible.
Q: So you really feel that you couldn’t deal with the other side
at all? It seems like both the dark and the light are essential.
YO: And also there’s a part of me thinking, for instance, Greek
tragedies, and there was tragi-comedy. I mean, the tragedy side
was a kind of atonement that you do in public, a catharsis, and
that catharsis helps others to go through their primal scream or
whatever: A lot of people used to say to me when I wrote things
like “Death of Samantha,” why so sad? And I said that sad songs
are good because then you can get it over with and just go on,
it’s a good thing.
So I have that feeling, that it’s all right, but when you see
something like that happen, it’s weird, isn’t it? So it’s sort
of like a mystery that I have to - there are many different
things that we still don’t know. Did the song come first, or was
the song a premonition, or did the song make it happen? That
sort of thin line, you never know. And believe me, since I wrote
“Walking on Thin Ice” my life was walking on thin ice. So this
time I said, enough with walking on thin ice, I am standing on
firm ground, good earth, and I have to tell myself that.
I guess it has to do with the power you have when you are so
well known, and that power is the power that somehow everyone is
giving over of themselves, right? And you have this power, but
the responsibility that goes along with it is such a mystery.
Q: It’s immense isn’t it?
YO: It’s something I have to be very caring about, because I
once met a guy in a record shop, and he just came to me and
said, “Oh hi, you’re Yoko Ono? so I said yes, and he said,
“Listen, I met you in London once, I was one of the assistant
whatevers, and you looked at my numbers and you said - ‘Oh for
the next five years it’s going to be terrible, and just be
careful’ - and it was, it was very very terrible for five years,
and how did you do it?” And I felt guilty like I had done
something. I just looked into the numbers. Then I said, “Look,
from now on it’s going to be good, okay?” This without seeing
any numbers, I just felt like I had to say it. And I wondered if
it was me who did it, you know, or if it was just the numbers I
honestly read, was it that I’m psychic and I knew it, or was it
that I said it, and it affected him, I don’t know. I don’t know
what it takes. You have to be very careful.
Q: It has seemed to me, looking at your life, that if it were on
a mathematical grid, you’re right at the center-and everything
changes when it goes through you.
YO: I don’t know what it is. I just have to be very careful.
Having good thoughts, and doing good things with good
intentions. Both John and I never did anything otherwise,
really. You might think ah ha! of course, you must have been
hypocrites, I don’t know what you think-but you see, think of a
suggestion where you are in a position where it affects a lot of
people, then you would be careful too. And you can’t use it
lightly. John and my life on the daily life level, was pretty
boring in a sense, I mean boring for other people, pretty
normal. I think that maybe a middle-America housewife has it
better, you know, more exciting, because anything we did was
going to be blown up to some huge proportion. So we were
careful. We didn’t do things that were out of place much, if we
could help it. Because it created a lot of repercussions. But
then it’s not fun for people to mention about how he used to be
always so generous with tips or whatever, it’s more interesting
to write about somebody who was tight with his tips though he
was a millionaire. Our life was pretty sort of like, well,
normal is the word, not eventful in a sense that people think.
When you are really like that, so careful; sometimes we’d go “Oh
to hell with it, let’s go out drinking,” because first of all
everybody does that. You know, working-class people will go out
on the weekend and have a beer or two, right? We don’t even get
to do that. So one day we feel like doing it. Then you know John
went to Los Angeles, and Elliot Mintz, a friend of ours in L.A.,
told me later, ”All this talk about his lost weekend was blown
up,” one weekend he had a big drinking spree, and he did it in
style, so to speak, so it got into the news and everything. It
seemed like he was drinking every day, but he wasn’t that way.
And maybe that’s the problem, that he wasn’t drinking every day,
so when he got there he felt like, “Hooray, this is it!”
Q: I was just wondering if you have any theories about dreams.
YO: I think that dreaming is definitely part of our life. It’s
part of reality, but how can we find dreams. It depends on the
dream. Some dreams are just dreams to regurgitate whatever
experience you’ve had or to get rid of certain emotions. And
some dreams are maybe messages, you never know. But it depends
on the dream as well, so I don’t have a general concept about
dreams per se. But then also, there’s a thing called dream
power, which is I think real in a sense. That all the things
that happen are in human history, for instance, I mean, I
believe in human race dreams. That we dream together. We used to
be wanting to fly. I mean, you know about the history of flying,
first it started with a wish to fly and then they started to try
to jump off the hill and now we have something called an
airplane. And also that wish that we always had, what if we went
to the moon.
The moon was something that was always mysterious and poets
always talked about the moon and there’s always a fairytale
about “I wonder if?” or “I wish,” or “we flew to the moon,” and
now finally we went to the moon.
So dreams come true if you keep dreaming about it, but then how
much and to what extent and how many people have to dream - that
sort of thing. Of course, if you dream alone or if you dream
together there’s a big difference in its power, and how it’s
realized, you know? And some people might inadvertently dream
something negative, and they feel terrible about it, but it
depends on who is dreaming stronger, you know, so you may not
have to worry about it. You dream your competitor in your class
died, you know, well, you’re thinking did I wish it- but then
your competitor might have a very strong survival dream so it
doesn’t matter. So I think that dreaming is part of our brain
function, that it’s definitely very strong, and it’s a vibration
that works.
Q: We did want to talk about food. But that’s really on the
plane of ordinary reality.
YO: Well sure, that’s part of our lives. I’ll tell you what I
think about that.
We went through the same mistakes, you know most people write a
book, like “Saltless Diet,” or something. But if you investigate
carefully you might find that that person has a liver trouble
and he needs a saltless diet. We do tend to find an answer for
ourselves and share it without knowing why. And we shared our
concept of love or whatever, and maybe that’s not applicable to
certain persons at certain times of their lives. We have to
understand that. The diet that is applicable to me, may not be
applicable to you. And I think that instead of listening to
other people’s intuition, which is based on their condition, I
think we have to relearn to listen to our own intuition. Our own
intuition is very much destroyed and distorted and what-not
because of all these messages coming to us, you know, from the
television and from our parents and from our teachers and
friends, etc. So we no more know what our instinct is, we no
longer know.
Sometimes I have a strong craving for something, and I think
“What is this craving?” is it craving or is it because I just
heard on television that this tastes good or something. I have
to really think about it. Once I was in a car and this filmmaker
who was working for me in my film project was driving and I was
sitting next to him - and suddenly I had a craving for
hamburgers. “Stop, let’s go eat hamburgers? I said, and he said,
“Oh, funny that you should say that because I’m a famous burger
man and I love hamburgers!” He told me a story - when he went to
Paris for the first time, he asked for a cheeseburger, and
everybody laughed. He can’t stand not eating hamburger for one
day. And I looked at him, and he’s one of these big guys, uh
huh, ah, okay, so it’s his dream, I see.
And you know about the search for yourself, philosophically,
it’s been discussed many times. But even on that level,
foodwise, in everything to do with your life, you’re the wisest
person, just remember that. And when you say search for self,
you are searching for what you’ve lost because of all the other
messages that are coming to you because of the hypnotism that
you are put under by others in the world. It’s as simple as that.
(source)
December 25, 2009, 1:55am
