Yoko Ono

February 11, 2005

Yoko, Now - The surprisingly sexy septuagenarian.

Yoko Ono is darting around her apartment in the Dakota on a bitterly cold and dark afternoon getting ready for a trip. The extra-generous proportions of the space-soaring ceilings with doorways just beneath-only emphasize her tininess, as she dashes across the wall-to-wall white carpeting wearing all black. With her little voice, smooth skin, and trim cargo pants, she seems a lot younger than her age, which is 71.

Ono's style has evolved over time, influenced by her role as an artist, by her politics, but mostly, like a true icon, by her undeniably solid sense of herself. "I really communicate quite strongly with what I wear," she says. When Yoko first came on the scene as a public figure, her hair was long and unkempt, her clothes loose, baggy, outrageous for the time. "It was such an improper thing to do, to grow your hair." She giggles a childish giggle, still delighted at the naughtiness of her former self. It was after John Lennon was killed that she cut her hair into the henna'ed spikes she still wears, and adopted boxy men's suits. "This was when people were all wearing nightgowns! I wasn't wearing that," she says. "I created a kind of outfit that made it easy for me to work. It's a male society, and you have to not be totally different from them; you have to sort of use their vocabulary in some ways to deal with them." She likes Armani, but not exclusively, and swears that she does love bright color-that if she's in the mood for something taxi-cab yellow and feathered like a marabou, she'd be more than glad to put it on. But mostly she's decided that the clearest message her wardrobe can give is one of neutrality. Like a lot of artists, she prefers to remain a blank slate, but she feels satisfied that the "work" she did in the sixties-all that jeans-wearing and bed-sitting-made it possible for us all to dress the way we do now, which is to say, however we want. "This age is a beautiful age," she says. "Each one of us wearing something that we like to wear. We enjoy it, we show it, and it's beautiful."

She hasn't yet decided what she'll wear on this trip, to Oslo, Norway, where she will show her latest work at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Called ONOCHORD, it consists of a lecture/performance by Ono and a group-participation exercise: the flashing of a rudimentary Morse-code version of "I Love You" using tiny penlights printed with the event's name, date, and location. "It's a race between people who destroy the Earth planet and people who heal the Earth planet," she says, to explain the very "love is the answer" mission of the work. "Love is getting so scarce, and people are scared and frightened. We have to go back to trusting each other and loving each other. I really think I'm on a mission of making sure we heal this Earth."
See the Gallery http://www.newyorkmetro.com/fashion/05/spring/yokoono/index.htm

February 17, 2005

Listen to Yoko Ono's new version of "Give Peace A Chance."

Lyrics

While the world watched in horror
Two hyjacked planes destroyed a trade centre
You better believe it, you better deal with it
It's time to give peace a chance
Give peace a chance

Chorus

In the morning of terror
Sudden violence destroyed the two towers
Last hug, last kiss, last exchange
A couple falling hand in hand

Firefighters, rescue workers, sacrificing their own lives
Burning, scorching, screaming, running
You better believe it, you better deal with it
It's time to Give peace a chance

Chorus

The sky was so blue
And we had no clue
A city, a country we love so much
You better believe it, you better deal with it
Check out, speak out and reach out
Let's come together and work it out

Chorus

www.yoko-ono.com

February 23, 2005 -- PlanetOut Entertainment

An interview with Yoko Ono

First she was blamed for breaking up the Beatles.

Then she was pilloried for her weeklong "bed-in" for peace with husband John Lennon. (All they were saying was give peace a chance!)

Now the right wing is on a tear because she recorded a queer love song -- "Every Man Has a Man Who Loves Him" -- that has quickly become an international gay club sensation.

In truth, Yoko Ono is more peace-loving spiritual healer than cultural warrior. And she is eager to share the love with gays and lesbians in a dark time when that very concept is under attack.

From her Paris hotel room, where she was promoting the Human Rights Campaign's "Love Rocks" CD on the eve of Valentine's Day, Ono spoke exclusively with PlanetOut Entertainment editor Jenny Stewart about the song, the harsh politics of America, and what John would have imagined of our future.

Religious right leaders recently vetoed some of the performers at the inaugural ball because they were considered "too liberal" or too pro-gay. As an artist yourself, what do you think of that ideology?

It's very interesting in a way that they're focusing so much on gays. They must think gays instill power and pose some kind of threat or something, you know?

You've always been extremely open about your spirituality. How does your interpretation of religion and spirituality differ from that of the religious right?

Well, I accept all faiths in the sense that I believe that faith itself is power. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just that when it becomes a certain religious sect, they sort of limit it and make it into something contrived in that the organization itself has a belief or interpretation of what that religion has to be.

And that's where the mistake comes in, because then you've got people saying "this is it," like everyone else should disappear or something. Which then goes against their original idea of loving each other and making themselves feel like the whole world is brothers and sisters, you know?

All religions are based around love, so ... where is the love, then? It's like they're building their own theory in a way, and kind of hating a group of people.

Right now, gays are under attack from the White House. As an artist, what role can music play in creating change in such an ugly time?

I don't really think it's an ugly time, I think it's a very interesting time in a sense of we are forced to have dialogue. We are forced to stand up and speak out, and that's what we're doing.

I think in the end, we will probably have to understand how we have to be for ourselves and for others, and that we will get wiser and wiser from this. And I believe we will create a more beautiful world, and this is just a start.

If John were alive today, do you think he would have supported your recording of "Every Man Has a Man Who Loves Him?"

Imagine. [Chuckles.] You should imagine! Think about it -- you know about John, you know what John and I used to do together, so the answer is just, "Imagine."

Your comeback as a dance-club diva has brought you new popularity with gay listeners, but did it also initiate any kind of backlash or any kind of negative response from other segments of your fan base?

I don't think so. If someone's going to attack you or something, well, that's just the first step of negativity. I just think the song is circulating faster than I can, and the music is speaking out, I'm speaking out, and it's beautiful.

It sounds like this is a really exciting time for you.

Yes it is, and we all have to be totally excited about the fact that we are getting wiser and more aware, and together we are going to dream about a beautiful world.

What about a tour? Do you have any plans to tour behind this song?

All I know is, I'll do my best, and I'll do whatever I can do for this.

March 19 2005 -- Daily Telegraph.

Lennon widows keen to put record straight

John Lennon's widows are preparing to go head-to-head over the former Beatle's life and legacy in two conflicting 'biographies', says Tom Leonard in 'The Daily Telegraph'.

An American-made musical about Lennon's life, which has been approved by his second wife Yoko Ono, will be opening on Broadway just a few months before the publication of a Lennon book by his first wife, Cynthia.The musical, whose script was 'authorised' by Ono before she gave permission for producers to use songs from Lennon's solo career, is likely to reopen old wounds in her relationship with others who were close to him. Ono and Sir Paul McCartney have long argued over song rights. The musical's producers have chosen to ignore almost all of Lennon's output while in the Beatles, particularly the songs he wrote with McCartney, and concentrate on his later life with Ono. She has donated two previously unreleased love songs to the production, one of which she claims Lennon wrote about her while he was still married to Cynthia. Ono married Lennon in 1969, after an affair which Cynthia first learnt about from a newspaper article.

Sources close to Cynthia, who had a son, Julian, with Lennon during their seven-year marriage, say that she will be 'honest' about Ono in her book, which is simply titled "John" and will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in September. Although she wrote another book about Lennon some years ago, she says that this one will include 'so much that I have never said, so many incidents that I have never spoken of and so many feelings I have never expressed -- great love on one hand; pain and torment on the other.' Now 65, Cynthia met Lennon in 1958 at Liverpool College of Art, where they were both studying lettering. They married four years later. The marriage has often been portrayed as an unequal one, in which Cynthia was far more devoted to her husband than he was to her.

"The time has come when I feel ready to tell the truth about John and me, our years together and the years since his death," she said. "Only I know what happened between us -- why we stayed together, why we parted and the price I paid for having been John's wife." She says that she decided to write a book now because, having tried to live an 'ordinary life' since Lennon's death in 1980, "I have come to realise that I will always be known as John's first wife." Meanwhile, the musical producers have made it quite clear whose version of Lennon's life they favour.The production's official website makes only a passing reference to Cynthia but describes Ono as Lennon's 'true love'.

Turning on its head the conventional wisdom that Lennon wrote his best songs for the Beatles, the musical will include only a couple of very early songs by the hand. Don Scardino, the musical's director and a self-proclaimed 'huge Beatles fan', said he believed that Lennon would have wanted to focus on his solo career.'He wasn't very interested in the Beatles' music,' Scardino said.'It was an aesthetic choice to leave out the Beatles music. We do have early Beatles songs in the show but not from the Lennon-McCartney catalogue.' The musical 'will tell the story of John Lennon's life, using Lennon's own words and 27 of his songs,' he said, adding that Ono, 72, had 'approved' the script and sat in on all the casting sessions. "I asked her a lot of questions, for historical accuracy or for her feelings about certain things, and she made some wonderful suggestions, all of which I use," Scardino said. "But she has allowed me to tell the story in my own way, from my point of view, which is very generous."

Yoko Ono receives lifetime achievement award from Japan Society
Friday, April 8, 2005

NEW YORK — Yoko Ono, the Japanese artist and widow of former Beatle John Lennon, received the lifetime achievement award from the Japan Society in New York during Wednesday's "IMAJINE 2005" inaugural arts and culture gala benefit.

The society also presented the Rising Star award to Takashi Murakami who curated an exhibition titled "Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" while the American Innovator award went to Robert Wilson. (Kyodo News)

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=333356

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April 23, 2005 -- Birmingham News

Plastic Ono? Yoko's far from that during phone chat

She'll probably go down in history as the woman who broke up the Beatles, but Yoko Ono, 72, is so much more.

Aside from being John Lennon's soulmate and the mother of his son, Sean, Ono was her husband's teacher, business partner and muse. Lennon told anyone who would listen that he respected her and sometimes felt in awe of her.

Take a look at that famous Annie Leibovitz photo, taken at the couple's home in the Dakota on the afternoon of Lennon's death - Dec. 8, 1980. He's curled up against Ono, clutching her hair, naked and adoring. Ono, meanwhile, lies fully clothed at his side, accepting his embrace calmly, her face a serene mask.

When she hooked up with greatness, Ono's own art and music - so avant-garde and for many, hard to take - became an adjunct to the more visible role she played on the world stage as Lennon's wife.

His politically active, fiercely independent, ferociously eccentric, highly protective wife.

Even today, some of John's fans love to hate her, and Ono knows it.

Mixed feelings from the public are a constant in her life, along with various misconceptions people have about the Lennon-Ono relationship. A 15-minute phone conversation is hardly enough time to probe even a few of those, but I got the feeling Ono still bears scars.

"So many people had a bad feeling that John was with me," she says simply. "Well, hmm, he was. I can't change history."

Critics have painted Ono as a dragon lady, but on the phone, she sounds nothing like that. She's polite and responsive, answering questions with varying shades of confidence, humility, humor, embarrassment and warmth.

Ono hems and haws a bit, but she delivers a clear message. Being the overseer of the Lennon estate is her job, and she's determined to keep the output of high quality.

"If I was not doing this, I wouldn't sleep well at night," Ono says. "John was very supportive of me, and it's my turn. I should do it. I want to do it. And I have to do it."

This, in fact, is the second conversation I've had with Ono - both spurred by a traveling exhibit of Lennon drawings, prints, etchings, photos and lyric sheets. The show came here in 1998 and will return, seven years later, for a three-day stint at the Tutwiler Hotel.

"When I'm Sixty-Four: The Artwork of John Lennon" will be on view next weekend. Hours are 5-9 p.m. next Friday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. April 30 and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. May 1. Proceeds from $2 admission donations will benefit Adopt-A-Classroom.

The 2005 display, which includes several sold-out series, has added colorful drawings John created in his kitchen with Sean, many of them whimsical sketches of birds, bunnies, elephants, frogs and flowers.

When I tell Ono it's hard to believe Sean is almost 30, she laughs and agrees, saying her son isn't crazy about it, either.

"I don't think he likes it," she says. "When I see him, I see him in double. I see him now, and I see him as a little boy."

Ono says she slowly and carefully releases artworks from Lennon's portfolio, keeping the exhibition fresh and repeat visitors satisfied. The same goes for his unpublished songs, two of which are included in "Lennon: The Musical," a biographical theater piece that opened this week in San Francisco.

After more development and tweaking, it's headed to Boston, and then to Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre in July.

Naturally, Ono had to approve the concept for writer-director Don Scardino to go forward with it, and she has been serving as a consultant to the production from the start. In the musical, Lennon is portrayed by a collective of actors - male and female, of varying races and ages.

"I think John would have liked that," Ono says. "We have nine John Lennons, and it shows that not just a white man can sing his songs. He was a complicated guy, so this is part of it, too. It's an incredible, incredible idea. I think this is like a revolution."

The dialogue was lifted from Lennon interviews, and the songs from his solo career. Ono says she allowed the production to include "India, India" and "I Don't Want to Lose You" in the score, neither of which was recorded by Lennon during his lifetime. She also OK'd the use of photos and artworks, which are shown on screens integrated into the set design.

Scardino didn't ask her to play herself on stage, Ono says, and she wouldn't have done so, anyway.

"No, I don't think I need to be in there," she says. "If John was here, he would have been the same way about himself. We're part of a big group called the world."

http://www.al.com/music/birminghamnews/mcolurso.ssf...se/entertainment/111419381734221.xml

High concept

Described by her husband John Lennon as 'the world's most famous unknown artist', Yoko Ono discusses her most creative moments with John Robinson

Saturday April 23, 2005
The Guardian

(From left) John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980, a visitor walks through an exhibition of Ono's work in Valencia in 2001 and below, Ono and Lennon famously spent their honeymoon in bed. Photographs: AP

The 1960s had already been fairly eventful for Yoko Ono. She'd published a book of "instructional poems", and submerged herself in the New York avant garde. At Carnegie Hall in 1961 she had amplified, to no particular critical acclaim, a flushing toilet. It was, however, at a private view of her Indica Gallery show in 1966 that she asked Beatle John Lennon to hammer a nail into a canvas, and inadvertently became half of one of the 20th-century's most notorious couples.

With Yoko Ono, it was a conceptual show then, and it's a conceptual show still. An artist who helped define what conceptual and performance art might be all about, in the 1960s, she arrived with ideas based around imagination, peace and dreams. And though she's still happy to talk about them, this is not someone who's part of the nostalgia business.

"It was a very exciting time," she says now. "But life is always exciting. I don't think that this generation should think that those times were much more exciting than now. Once you taste the excitement of life, it never fades."

Faced with considerable hostility when she turned the Fab Four into a Fab Five, Yoko has since enjoyed a far greater respect. Undoubtedly a hip businesswoman, and curator of the Lennon legacy, it's been her occasionally terrifying, often beautiful music which has benefited from a critical rethink. Always popular among like minds - John Lydon would DJ at parties with her music - down the years Yoko's audience has remained a niche market, but a committed one.

It's fitting then, that she should turn up at the Vincent Gallo-curated All Tomorrow's Parties, alongside other mavericks of the decidedly leftfield.

"I'm totally nervous," she says of this latest, perhaps unexpected career turn, "and at the same time, very happy that I was asked to do this one."

"I am still excited every day," she says. "Life is so fascinating! I love it!"

It's been a full 72 years so far - and here she dwells on some of its defining events.

Early happenings

In New York in the early 1960s, Yoko was part of the Fluxus movement, a group of artists who took a humorous, perverse look at everyday objects. Long on the conceptual, Yoko gave instructions for people to imagine paintings and machines that didn't exist. A sales list of the period lists Crying Machine at $3,000 which "drops tears and cries for you when coin is deposited". "Artists with the same kind of spirit in those days all ended up in New York," says Yoko. "We met, we created, we inspired each other, and, eventually, the world. It could be a book, but one I've no intention of writing at the moment."

Grapefruit

First published in 1964, Grapefruit collected Yoko's "instructional" works. Before he and Yoko got together, John Lennon kept his copy by his bed, and was by turns vexed and delighted by what he read. "Instructions make the work more conceptual," explains Yoko. "I was a poet who was writing haikus from a very early age. People used to say, 'When Yoko takes steps, a poem comes out of her mouth as she stops.' This was when I was about five years old, and the steps I was taking were very short. The haikus developed into instructions, so in terms of the form of my artwork it wasn't much of a jump. I still use the form of instructions in many works."

Cut Piece

A performance piece - audience members were invited to take to the stage and cut off part of Yoko's clothing. Performed first in Japan, in 1964, this put Yoko herself on the line, while still being an "instructional" piece. "I realised that it was more accurate to my artistic concept to use the form of instructions for my work," says Yoko. "It went into creating situational events - now called performance art, I believe." But what's it like to have people you don't know come on stage and cut your clothes off? "The first time around in the 1960s, I was a bit scared," says Yoko, "but when I did it again in 2002, I was full of love for the human race."

The Acorn Event

Since becoming a couple in May 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had become inseparable, and together they planned to submit a piece to a contemporary sculpture exhibition: two acorns, to be buried in the grounds of Coventry cathedral. The plan? To bring together east and west. "We suddenly realised that when we planted the two acorns together, there was no distance between them," says Yoko. "The famous poem of 'East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet' was true - but John and I brought east and west together out of our love." The acorns were promptly stolen. John and Yoko supplied more, and a security guard to watch over them for the duration of the exhibition.

The Bed-Ins

After their March 1969 marriage in Gibraltar, John and Yoko became "Mr and Mrs Peace" - spending their honeymoon in bed, in front of the world's press at room 902 of the Amsterdam Hilton. One of Yoko's ideas - "A dream you dream alone is a dream, a dream you dream together is reality" - was the basis of the plan. "I have a document in which I coined this line in New York before I came to London in '66," Yoko explains. "I made that statement when I was dreaming alone. In hindsight, you could say that the bed-in was a culmination of that idea. This is more proof that when one promises or wishes for something, it could really happen. So one should be very careful not to wish for anything negative."

Fly

By December 1970, John and Yoko were in New York, surrounded by experimental film-makers and hungry for avant garde experience. For Up Your Legs Forever, they filmed peoples' legs "for peace". Fly was prompted by a joke. A man is caught staring at a woman with large breasts, and explains himself by saying he is looking at her hat. Fly was a film of the insect crawling across a naked woman's body. "The experience of making Fly was really hilarious, actually," says Yoko. "The shooting was done in one night and was over by dawn... just like the film. All night, we tried to catch a fly that flew away. There was definitely a shortage of flies. One assistant finally got some in the subway and brought them back."

Season Of Glass

After John Lennon's 1980 murder, Yoko made this unavoidably raw and personal album. The cover depicted a glass of water and Lennon's bloodstained glasses - a statement which brought Yoko in for more criticism. "It never crossed my mind that it was somehow using him. John and I were like one person at the time," she later said. "I am human, too," she says now. "So of course, I don't enjoy being the mark of hostility. But my take on life was that it was always invigorating, intense, and interesting. I had no time to lend my ears to hostility."

Mend Piece

Before they were a couple, Yoko sent John a box of sanitary towels - inside the box was a "mend" piece, a broken red cup for the recipient to mend. "My wife wondered who this woman was who sent me a box of Kotex," Lennon said later. "I didn't know what to do about it" After 9/11, Yoko devised Mend Piece For The World, and set it up in New York - a participation work in which viewers are encouraged to mend broken pottery. "The theme of the piece is to mend," says Yoko. "It is an attempt to create a symbiotic mending between what you are mending - maybe a broken cup - and what you wish to mend. Like the world."

· Yoko Ono performs at All Tomorrow's Parties on Sunday

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,,1468328,00.html

Ono in Meltdown festival line-up

Yoko Ono, Sinead O'Connor, Jeff Beck and Neil Finn are among the musicians who will appear at London's 2005 Meltdown festival in June.

Punk singer Patti Smith has put the line-up together as artistic director of the two-week event, which is taking place at the South Bank Centre.

Also involved is Marc Almond in one of his first live performances since his motorcycle accident last October.

Previous Meltdown directors include Morrissey, David Bowie and Nick Cave.

In March, Smith said she wanted to "touch on all aspects of our culture" and "salute the best art there is, aesthetically and spiritually".

The events announced on Friday include tributes to playwright Bertolt Brecht, poet William Blake and guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

Almond will join Neil and Tim Finn in the Brecht event, entitled Stand Bravely Brothers, on 23 June.

O'Connor, meanwhile, will perform alongside singer-songwriters Beth Orton and Kristin Hersch in an evening of "protest songs and lullabies" to celebrate Blake's Songs of Innocence.

Beck and Smith will be joined by Flea and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers for an homage to Hendrix on 26 June.

And Smith will mark the 30th anniversary of her seminal album Horses by performing it in its entirety with Welsh composer John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground.

Left-wing singer Billy Bragg, country artist Steve Earle and recently reformed rock band Television are also scheduled to appear at the festival, which runs from 11 to 26 June.

Last year's Meltdown, directed by ex-Smiths singer Morrissey, included appearances by Jane Birkin, Nancy Sinatra and playwright Alan Bennett.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4497901.stm

U.S. Newswire: Releases : Yoko Ono to Address The UN's General Assembly About Landmark 'Back to the Garden' Global Arts Initiative

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=46778

Yoko Ono Lennon : AS A CHILD OF ASIA
United Nations Address
Yoko Ono Lennon
May 4, 2005

AS A CHILD OF ASIA

Thank you, Secretary General Kofi Annan, esteemed members of the General Assembly, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, Mayor Iccho Ito of Nagasaki, Mayors of Peace, EPOP International, and especially Nihon Hidankyo and the Hibakusha, the living witnesses to and survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. My name is yoko ono. And it is my honor to be here with you all at this historic moment in time.

As a child of Asia, as a citizen of the global village, and as a woman of the species, I am concerned for the welfare of our planet.

I was in Tokyo during the Second World War. In the middle of the night, we were woken up to go down into the shelter while the B29s firebombed our city. It was frightening to see fire burning down the houses around us. Eventually, we, children, were evacuated to the country. The food was scarce. I remember we were always hungry. It was not just food. There was a shortage of everything, even toilet paper. So we managed with what we had and became rather inventive. Those experiences of the early days cast a long shadow in my life. More than half a century later, I still have a hard time throwing away empty paper bags and plastic containers. My children think that's quirky. Well, it must be.

When I was twelve years old, in 1945, the cities of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and their people were devastated by the Atomic Bomb. The war was pretty much at the end by then. But the unbearable sufferings of the Hibakushas did not end there. In fact, their long and excruciatingly painful journey had begun then and is still continuing to this day over half a century later. It is a suffering of a lifetime and more. In fact, it affected all of us on this planet. Nuclear damage does not disappear. It circulates and stays.

The Hibakushas have bravely and wisely turned their experience into a warning to the world by saying: NO MORE HIROSHIMA.

NO MORE HIROSHIMA and Nagasaki. There has not been a time when this warning has been so important as it is now. If we want to see this planet survive, NO MORE HIROSHIMA is a necessary wake up call for all of us.

We are already living in strange times without adding the threat of a Nuclear War. From the heavy usage of various chemicals and pesticides and with the radio active dust and rain from nuclear tests sites, our land is polluted, our rivers, lakes and oceans are polluted, and even our air is seriously polluted. Each time we breathe air, we are polluting our bodies. They have discovered pesticides and poisons in meat, fish, vegetables and fruit, and our mothers milk. The current condition of our environment is already challenging our immune system to its limits.

Nuclear Power can be very dangerous, even when it's used as pure energy, supposedly, in a contained form. Remember Chernobyl, our Three Mile Island and Nevada Nuclear Test Site and how the world is still being affected by them.

Many of my friends, young and old, are now suffering from physical deterioration and mental depression. It seems that we are polluting and killing ourselves before anybody drops a bomb on us.

Why make it even harder for this planet by continuing to increase the production of the most dangerous weapon known to us? Are we doing this to use the bomb? If we are, we must be crazy. Since the world is one body, we cannot drop a bomb far enough from ourselves to not get affected by its consequence. In fact, if we drop a bomb anywhere, we are dropping it on ourselves.

I wake up in the morning and see the blue sky and the birds singing in the park. Every day, I am thankful for being alive. I enjoy the life on this planet, immensely, and the culture and the civilization we, humans have created in the course of many, many centuries. This beautiful world of ours can still survive and survive well, if we focus our minds and actions in cleaning it up, instead of poisoning and destroying it further. It's clean-up time, as John Lennon said. It is not too late. It cannot be. We must give this planet one more chance.

Let us wake up, come together, and work on cleaning and healing our planet, instead of further destroying it. Let's not waste one more day in creating a machinery of destruction. Give us a chance. On behalf of ourselves and all species on earth. We can do it. We must.

A Dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. IMAGINE PEACE.

I love you.
http://www.jeclique.com/onoweb/news-un2005.html

Из Детройта...
Yoko Ono's Freight Train
The outdoor sculpture Freight Train, one of Yoko Ono's most ambitious works, is a German boxcar riddled with bullet holes and set on a short segment of railroad track. Because of its location on the South Lawn, Freight Train is on view notwithstanding museum hours.
Подробнее
http://www.dia.org/exhibitions/yoko.asp

Рулез... Надо бы туда Додю Коткина прислать, который Копперфилд. У него вагоны здорово исчезают. А Ёшке отдать какой-нибудь наш паровоз, который "вперёд летит" много лет на одном и том же месте. Пускай "строчит, пулеметчик" - всё лучше чем на металлолом пускать.

Серия "Жизнь замечательных людей" - Джон Леннон.
Серия "Жены, которые ну никак не могут считаться замечательными людьми, но изо всех сил ими притворяются" - Йоко Оно.

Горностаев Алексей

Точно!!!

ON CANADA- KEITH SAMARILLO TALKS WITH YOKO ONO
http://www.jeclique.com/onoweb/news-oncanadamay2005.html

May 31, 2005 - 11:40

Yoko Ono participates in student art exhibit based on her own 1960s project

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Yoko Ono praised student artworks based on her own "Instruction Works" at the opening of an exhibit here Tuesday.

Ono, the widow of slain Beatle John Lennon, attended the opening of an exhibit on the project, involving 15 students from Frankfurt's Staedelschule art school. The students used "Instruction Works" - a series of ideas for realizing artworks ranging from photographing posters in toilets to handing a completed film to various directors to edit - as a starting point for their own work.

Ono thanked the school for choosing to highlight her work and stressed the importance of art in contemporary society.

"There is so much confrontation and violence in the world, that art is increasingly important," she said.

The exhibit at the Portikus im Leinwandhaus in Frankfurt runs until June 26.

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/news/shownews.jsp?content=e053143A

Imagine it: Lennon on licence plates Jun 7 2005

JOHN Lennon's message of hope is to help fight hunger in America after Yoko Ono endorsed designs for a new charity car number plate featuring the singer's Imagine self-portrait.

The plates, the brainchild of ex-patriate Liverpool businessman Michael Towner, were legally approved for sale in Florida by the state's senator Jeb Bush, brother of US President George Bush.

They will now be advertised under the banner "Imagine there's no hunger", to raise money for a Florida food charity to help victims of hurricaine and poverty.

The design is the 102nd specialty licence plate to be approved in Florida. Other designs include the classic Florida oranges, and dolphins.

Florida 'specialty' tags have become a vital funding source for many organizations and more than $250m has been raised since the programme's inception.

According to state records, a charity Save the Panther plate raised $2,454,625 in 2004 and the University of Florida plate raised $2,105,377.

Anyone who buys an Imagine plate will be entered into a competition to attend the 2006 Mathew Street festival in Liverpool.

The plate was the brainchild of social entrepreneur Michael Towner, who says his family in Liverpool encouraged his love of the Beatles as he was growing up.

A former pupil of St Francis Xavier in Woolton and De La Salle in West Derby, Mr Towner is also planning a rooftop Beatles tribute concert to promote the plates.

He said Yoko Ono agreed to allow her former husband's image to be used on the plates after she was told the plates would raise money for the Florida Association of Food Banks.

A spokesman for Ms Ono released a statement on her behalf: "Imagine is a great word to spread around, and I was happy to do this because it is helping a very important charity."

Mr Towner said: "I am sure John would have had an 'appropriate' comment,, if he saw his image on the licence plates of Cadillacs and Lincolns tearing down I-95 in Miami and Palm Beach.

"However, he will be well pleased with how his memory is still helping the less fortunate."

Everton fan Mr Towner was born in Highfield Gardens, off Leeds Street, and attended nearby St Mary's primary school before his family moved to Belle Vale, where his mother Win still lives.

He now runs a consulting and lobbying firm for non-profit organisations in Florida, where he lives with his South African wife and daughters.

He said: "Money raised from the specialty plates will benefit the Florida Association of Food Banks, to fight hunger in Florida.

"We fully expect the huge Beatles' fan base in this state to get behind this plate. The design is beautiful and the message is multi-generational, but those of us who grew up on his music will connect in a very special way, and there are millions of us.

"In the words of John Lennon: 'Imagine . no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man'."

A survey of American Beatles fans in February 2003, found Imagine was their favorite solo Beatles Song, bringing in twice as many votes as second-placed Maybe I'm Amazed, by Paul McCartney.

Florida representative Ron Greenstein and Senator Burt Saunders initially filed the bills that ultimately resulted in the legislation that enacted the Imagine plate.

Mr Greenstein said: "Ms Ono allowed the food banks to use this image at no cost. She did so because she knows that John would have supported it.

"With the Imagine specialty license plate, more food will be provided to those families that do much of the work in our state for little pay."

FAFB members distribute food to more than 3,000 agencies in Florida and last year distributed more than 60 million pounds of food statewide, partnering with over 3,500 community based organizations throughout Florida.

The Imagine plate costs $10 plus the $25 annual registration fee, of which $20 will go to charity. For more information visit www.imagineplate.com

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0800beatles/0050news/tm_objectid=15600701%26method=f...

Age becomes her

Yoko Ono has long been defined by her status first as John Lennon's wife and then his widow. But now, at 72, she says she is brimming with a newfound love for life - kinda thing

Laura Barton
Monday June 13, 2005
The Guardian

Yoko Ono: 'That's when I thought wow! This is great! I survived! I'm 70 and, you know, life is beautiful or whatever.' Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

She rolls across the room like a ball bearing: small and gleaming and black. Yoko Ono, at the age of 72, is as compelling and seemingly unstoppable as she ever was. Her uniform is stark black, her sunglasses huge and bug-eyed, and beneath the jaggedy black hair her face is all sharp corners. She could be 30 years younger than she is, and, as if to bolster it, her conversation is liberally strewn with the detritus of youthspeak - the "sorta likes" and "kinda things" of another generation.

Ono has just returned from performing at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival with her son Sean, and she sits now in her stiflingly hot hotel suite, the french windows thrown open on to the winsome green of Hyde Park, telling how curiously hectic her life continues to be. "It's getting very busy since I was 70. It's very strange, but that's how it is. Well, I'm very happy about that, I'm not feeling that I'll be sitting in the kitchen."
This month, she is set to perform as part of Patti Smith's Meltdown festival. Are she and Patti friends? "Patti?" she wonders, in a Breathless Mahoney sort of way. "Well, I know her from way back of course. We're both very involved people, in sort of like 'involved in ourselves' kinda way, so it wasn't like chatty-chatty friends. But we kinda liked each other. And in 1974 we were on the same stage - she was reciting poetry and I was doing something. That was with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs kind of thing." And what did she read? "Oh," she says, "I didn't read. I introduced three of my poems and one was just I rang the bell, you know, three times, and I said, 'I'm gonna ring the bell three times and after that, immediately you think of what you wanna wish and wish it'. And that was a poem in a way."

This is the problem with Ono. Her refusal to submit to the conventional roles of poet, artist, wife, widow, has meant she has spent almost 40 years as a subject for public disdain: today she serves as shorthand for splitting up the Beatles, is still mocked for her avant garde artwork and her perceived whimsicalities - world peace, bed-ins, bell-ringing wishing-poems.

She fell into the public consciousness in 1968, as a fly in the perfect pink ointment of the Beatles, when John Lennon left his childhood sweetheart Cynthia and their son Julian to be with the Japanese conceptual artist who was seven years his senior and seemed to have appeared out of thin air. "Yeah, I came from nowhere, I came from Mars," she laughs. In fact, she came from Tokyo, where she was born in February 1933. Ono's father was a banker, and when she was in her teens she moved with her mother to the US. She still lives in New York, in the same apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side that she shared with Lennon, and outside which he was shot dead by Mark Chapman, but where, nevertheless, she has defiantly remained to spend her days dealing with matters concerning his estate and continuing her work as a musician and artist. All of her work, her campaigning, her thinking, is laced with this same defiance; an unwilting, almost angry optimism, which she admits she has worked hard to cultivate.

"I was a very depressed person," she explains, "and I was panicking about everything, and I was scared about things and I was very vulnerable. And in order to compensate for that I went for optimism." The depression, she says, was rooted in the isolation she felt growing up, when she was popular with her peers "but at the same time I felt that I had a world in me that I couldn't share. And so that was the loneliness - the loneliness was created because of that. So all my life I was feeling a touch lonely until I met John. And of course John was like that too."

They met at the Indica gallery in London in 1966, when she handed Lennon a card that said, simply, "breathe" and invited him to participate in a piece of artwork by paying five shillings to hammer a nail into a piece of wood. He responded with an offer of his own: "Well, I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." As Lennon would later tell it: "That's when we really met. That's when we locked eyes and she got it and I got it."

It would be two years before Lennon left Cynthia, and during that time, he and Ono had only intermittent contact - she would send him cards saying "dance" or "watch for me in the sky". He, meanwhile, kept by his bed a copy of her book, Grapefruit. "Imagine a raindrop," it read, "imagine the clouds dripping." Those two years of heartfelt imagining would ultimately spawn the lyrics to Lennon's song Imagine.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Ono was a key figure in the Fluxus movement, which was characterised by its dedication to the intangible rather than specifics, and perhaps as a result, to interview her is often to be met with replies that are rarely specific or anecdotal, but are instead broad statements about energy and positivity and radical social philosophies.

Ono says the roots of her artistic thinking lie in her early schooling in Japan: "When I was four years old, my mother put me into a school for early music education where you get perfect pitch and harmony and composition," she explains. "And while I was in this school there was a homework, which was very strange: it was 'just listen to all the sounds and noise that day in real life and try to translate that into musical notes'. So when I was at Sarah Lawrence [the New York visual arts-oriented college where she studied] I just listened whenever I woke up in the morning to the beautiful, beautiful bird sounds all over the garden . . . and I wanted to translate that into musical notes. And I realised that my knowledge of musical notes was limited, or the musical notes were too limited to express such a beautiful music that the bird was creating. So that's when I thought of trying to translate it into musical notes, which is like making it less exciting, just have it as an instruction: to listen to the birds singing at eight o'clock in the morning."

Last year, she memorably caused something of a furore in Liverpool with an exhibition entitled My Mummy Was Beautiful, with an image showing a woman's naked breasts and vagina which was displayed on posters across the city. "I wasn't trying to insult Liverpool," she says. "In fact, when I thought of the idea and I visualised this beautiful mom's breasts and vagina all around the city I thought, 'Ah, it would be so beautiful', and it's like giving them love, because we are all born from [our] mother's body, and that's the first thing that we were nurtured by - mothers' breasts." Why, then, does she think that some people saw the exhibition as borderline pornographic? "Somehow people try to inhibit that memory," she sighs. "Women are put in a position of feeling embarrassed about their bodies. It's so ridiculous, but also astounding - we have to always be apologetic about having created the human race."

Battling chauvinism and celebrating women has been one of Ono's presiding campaigns, particularly in songs such as Woman is the Nigger of the World, Men, Men, Men and Woman Power, in which she sings: "Did you have to cook the meals?/ Did you have to knit?/ Did you have to care for life instead of killing?/ There's no mistake about it, sisters,/ We women have the power to change the world."

She is, she says, now working on a new record, an extension in theme of her last, 2001's Blueprint for Sunrise, which was concerned with "pure feminism". She says: "It was about women, and what a woman goes through. There's many women now who think, 'Surely we don't need feminism anymore, we're all liberated and society's accepting us as we are'. Which is just hogwash. It's not true at all." The jaw juts a little higher. "You know, one out of four women who go to the emergency ward are there because of domestic violence - I mean that's in America, so you can imagine how difficult it is for women in third-world countries."

How, one wonders, did feminism come to be such a dirty word? "I think most women would like to forget about it and just have babies and maybe stretch their faces or something," she laughs sharply. "Society goes through phases, like breathing - breathing in, breathing out - I think there was a time when we, women, became a little bit freer and then we got scared. We got scared of being in a position of being ostracised, I suppose."

And yet the undeniable contradiction is that Ono is a woman who has been defined by her relationship with a man - first by her marriage to Lennon and then by her widowhood. "You know, the thing is I'm not fighting it," she replies wearily. "I'm considered as a widow, so am I going to stand up and scream about it? I was always considered as John and his wife, and not John and his wife and an artist. Whereas John was not always considered as Yoko Ono's husband. But you see," she says, perking up as she rolls back on to her track of relentless positivity, "you have to learn to use your energy well, and you don't get angry and emotional about it each time, because then you can die from anger."

What Ono believes in now is combating ageism, recently posing in a pair of hotpants to reinforce her message. Advancing age is, she says, an issue that particularly affects women. "Because, you know, men, even in newscasting, the male newscaster is always like daddy, you know, 50 or 60 or something, and then the women have to be 18 and blonde. They get blonder and blonder."

It is an issue that first struck her, curiously enough, at a dance party in New York when she was in her 20s. "I was dancing with some guy and we went to have coffee or something, and he was saying, 'Well, you know, you look alright now but another three or four years and you're gonna start looking old.' He was saying, 'Well, that's what women are, they start to get old very quickly.' And there was a kind of myth about women, that they don't age well, and men do." The mouth purses defiantly. "Well, I think it's the other way round! How did we manage to be convinced by an idea like that?"

With each passing decade, she says, she has been anticipating the arrival of a feeling of dread, but it has yet to come. "Thirty, 40, 50 ... each time I didn't have that 'oh-oh' feeling at all. And then suddenly 70," she says with excitement, "that's when I thought 'Wow!' And, you know, it was not the wow of 'oh'. It was like 'Wow, this is great! I survived! I'm 70 and, you know, life is beautiful or whatever.'"

What does she think happens when we die, I ask. "I have no idea!" she smiles, flapping her hands upwards. "I think about John," she begins delicately, and one realises that to Ono, Lennon must always serve to illustrate the immutability of death. "I think about him and I think that we have his work, and when I look back in hindsight I think part of him must have known that he had a short life. He was almost obsessive about creating every moment."

Ono herself hopes to live for another 30 years. "I've tonnes of things to do," she says with evident glee."You know, something happened to me when I became 70. I started to feel a tremendous love for the human race, and life and this planet, the universe, the whole shebang. And whenever I'm just crossing the street or something in New York and just feeling the weather, I think, 'This feels like Paris as well!' or 'I remember when ...' I'm always in a parallel world." And suddenly, beneath the beetle-black shades, a broad smile spreads through the sharp angles of her face.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1505281,00.html