Yoko Ono: quite the show

Many of my friends love the Beatles. 

Many of my friends who love the Beatles, hate Yoko Ono.

I've never really understood it. Or, to put it more accurately - to the extent that I have understood it, it has not reflected well on my friends. It is really hard not to think of it in terms of media-manipulated, un-thought-out distaste for a non-white female - people allowing themselves to be seduced by the media's unreflective, knee-jerk bigotry and misogyny, without any sort of critical engagement or questioning. To some extent, I guess it might also manifest some protective influence on their part, a desire to "save" John from Yoko's influence - a kind of backwards expression of love - but given that he's long since departed, and did so while he was still very much with her, perhaps it's time to give it up and try to actually learn a little about Yoko Ono's work...?  

I mean, I'm not a Beatles expert. I haven't rushed to the Disney Channel to see Get Back. I gather it does not really support the argument that Yoko broke up the Beatles, but I can't weigh in. I don't know why the Beatles broke up, but I suspect the pressures of fame and success, and maybe a desire for more individual freedom to pursue their own creative impulses, untethered to each other, have a lot more to do with it than Yoko Ono. Of course, it is certainly possible that John Lennon found his relationship with Ono and the places it took her more interesting than the prospect of continuing to make music with the Beatles - but a) were that the case, would you really want him to continue working on music he felt he'd moved beyond? and b) seeing the VAG retrospective of her work, entitled Growing Freedom, makes it hard to blame him, on that count, because it's genuinely interesting (and very fun, and thought-provoking, and worthwhile). There may be a bit of 60's naivete and idealism to some of what they do, but maybe we could use some of that these days, if it motivates the masses in a positive direction? I enjoyed Growing Freedom more than any art gallery show I've seen since about 2002, when I returned to Canada from Japan, and - a first for me, with the VAG - plan to go back again this weekend, because it's more than you can fully take in in a couple of hours. 

 

And if John really did care more about where he was going with Yoko than where he'd been with the Beatles - you'd figure it all might make people who think they love John, want to understand what he saw in her...? Early on, it probably wasn't her vocals! 

Did that last sentence make you chuckle? If so, let me clarify: I love some of what Yoko does vocally, which I connect to free jazz and vocal improv - but I have at times in my life really enjoyed free jazz and vocal improv, and people doing unusual things with their voices in performance, or just flat out HAVING unusual voices. From Peter Stampfel to David Thomas, from Maggie Nichols to Koichi Makigami, I'm drawn to idiosyncratic vocal deliveries. So speaking just for myself, I really, really like some of what Yoko does - for example, on the album Fly, there is a cut called "Mind Train." (That's the 16:53 album cut; there's also a rock video for it, featuring John). If I ever get to chat with Damo Suzuki again, I'm gonna ask him what he thinks of Yoko, because to me, Fly sounds like vocal improv set to Krautrock, while being recorded at a time when neither of those were really widely known phenomenon outside their respective scenes. I do not blame people for not getting into this stuff. It is where Yoko is at her absolute best as a singer and musician - way more interesting than her contributions to, for example, Double Fantasy. She's got one hell of an instrument, for someone for whom music came as a secondary or tertiary interest, after conceptual/ performance art and film - but even people who really enjoy the current Yoko Ono retrospective at the VAG might not "get" it (or care for it). They still might want to try her better rock songs - "We're All Water" and "Walking on Thin Ice" are amazing, by me - but experience has taught me that maybe trying to get people to open their mind to Yoko Ono is not best served by directing them at her records. 

And since she wasn't really singing until after she was in a relationship with John Lennon, you probably have to factor that out as what drew Lennon to her. He is very clear, in talking about Yoko in a film that plays as part of the current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, that early in their relationship, the couple thought that "Yoko couldn't rock'n'roll with me, and I couldn't avant-garde with her." Which - while ultimately proving untrue - as John also says - suggests that his interest in her, early in their relationship - they met in 1966 - had nothing to do with her singing; it was her work as an artist that was key, not her voice or her music, which if I understand correctly, really only emerged from his encouragement, as a sort of bi-product of their relationship. Seems a pretty good argument for wanting to make sense of her art, for wanting to see if maybe, just maybe, any prejudices we might have towards Yoko ARE rooted in sexism and misogyny and a longstanding unthought-out widespread bias. You might emerge from the Vancouver Art Gallery's ongoing exhibition on Yoko Ono still rejecting her, but by going to it - a remarkable, moving, exciting opportunity to consider her ideas, her work, her life - you will at least get the satisfaction of knowing you gave her a chance, tried to see what John saw in her. You might even start to feel that Lennon's pushing Ono towards the spotlight is his major post-Beatles contribution to the world... You MIGHT be surprised by your reactions. 

I certainly was. I had never seen "Cut Piece," for example - one very small sample of what's on display at the VAG, in which Ono sits onstage and men come and cut pieces of her clothing off her. Imagine her vulnerability, sitting in front of people, being stripped with scissors? Another film, Fly - a companion piece to the album - has a naked woman being crawled on by flies. Another piece - which I believe you actually can participate in yourself - involves bagism (mentioned in the first line of "Give Peace a Chance"); viewers are invited to strip and get into a bag (or if you're shy, to get into a bag and strip). There are two large body-sized bags on the wall. I contemplated doing it - though I was wearing the wrong boots, which are hard to put on once they are removed, and let that decide against undressing (maybe I'll wear different footwear on Saturday?). The women I was with were more nervous about the idea of public nudity than I was, interestingly enough (and also more moved by "Cut Piece" and the vulnerability that it exposed), so I suspect that female viewers will find some of this work more rewarding than male. 

There is also a room - the "Arising" display - where women are invited to write out stories of abuse, which was pretty heavy to enter, though the biggest trigger area of the exhibition for me was quite different - a room where you could leave a sticky note with a message for your mother. Just thinking about it, about what I might say, nearly brought me to tears. Different people will respond very differently to Ms. Ono's work, because you become part of some of these works. Your response isn't just important, it's essential.  

If that statement seems puzzling, there is a lot of context provided for making sense of it within Growing Freedom. As Yoko explains in a 12-minute, context-setting, multi-screen documentary film by George Fok that plays in one room, her wish is for "everybody to become an artist" - to not produce expensive fetish items out of her fine art, but to get people thinking, feeling, and creating themselves. This is why - I also learned - her first three avant-garde albums with John Lennon, Two Virgins, Life With the Lions, and The Wedding Album, are described as "unfinished music," because it is the participation of the listener that is meant to finish them. There are many other examples in Growing Freedom, also including being invited to "take a piece of sky," a jigsaw puzzle piece with the blue skies and clouds of that Plastic Ono Band Live Peace in Toronto album printed on it, placed in upside-down riot-gear cop helmets hanging from wires. You are also invited in one area to sit on the floor and stack stones... 

Another interactive display involves being invited to sit at a table and participate in the "Mend Piece," where VAG attendants provide constantly refreshed chunks of shattered China that you can tie together with twine, making small sculptures that you can put on display... 

There is also a "Wish Tree" where you can tie, in the fashion of Japanese New Year's customs, a written 

wish on a piece of white paper to a tree. (Both my wife's wish and mine involved my upcoming surgery, but as you can imagine, there was quite the range of expression on these trees, which you are free to peruse, even photograph).

The films and the interactive exhibitions were the most exciting to me, the most revealing, but there is plenty of conventional gallery stuff as well - a lot of art and writing by John and Yoko, most of which is presented in reproduction. There is even a turntable setup, if you want to listen to records! If you are inclined to hear interviews or music, the one caveat is that due to COVID, it is suggested you bring your own headphones. I might spend more time with those more "information-heavy" areas of the exhibition this Saturday - there is more than can be taken in on one trip. 

Now about those bags...