do you consider the internet to be a nutopian space?Ha ha. I like Yoko Ono. I was thinking of her today because I was thinking of my habit of thinking up ideas for books, which I don't write. That made me think of Yoko's old book "Grapefruit," which — yes, it is a book — describes projects, things that could be done easily, things that could be done but are too tedious or too hard to do, and things that are completely impossible. The descriptions are charmingly minimal. I'd quote some, but you'd get the wrong idea. Go over to the link and check some pages out. You can search inside the book. Try, for example, searching for "cloud."
It is one of the nutopian spaces....
I recently watched the film LET IT BE and I wonder why you didn’t smile through the whole thing. You have such a lovely smile.
My smile was erased....
How do you always stay so grounded? So often I find myself floating away from all this.
Look at the steps we take when we walk. Our steps are made of floating and grounding, each time we take the step. So don’t worry. You are grounding and floating, every day, as you walk. You should walk more.
It seems that the real project is stating one imagined project after another. Think of it, then let it go. Imagine all the unwritten books. Have you read them?
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42 comments:
Guys stick with one project.
Ono is (or at least was) a terrible person who made truly awful art. Her only great contribution to art is that she inspired The Rutles.
"Guys stick with one project."
a. Guys stick with one [fill in the blank].
b. Guys stick with one.
c. Guy's stick.
Guy's stick
You've lost me, but this might be a penis joke.
w/v: urguess - ur guess is as good as mine
You'll break Your Back, Yoko
Grounding and floating
Floating and grounding
Is good as far as it goes;
But never forget
To avoid nasty cracks
Watch where you put your toes.
Oh. You should SEE the pop-up cards that I don't make. They're amazing! Once I think them, though, they are pretty much done, so actually doing them is just proving that I thought them and that proof is getting less and less interesting and more and more all the 'eh'.
Happy Birthday, look, here's the proof I thought something. Eh.
"You've lost me..."
Because, being female, I'm all over the place. There's no way you can be all over the place. You're bound to get lost. It's just a concept.
"You've lost me, but this might be a penis joke."
But yes, it's a reference to the penis, which I take it rh was making all along. Isn't it obvious? If it's not obvious, make it obvious. That would be a male approach.
OK, Joko Ono is not grounded. She has been loosed.
Is cabin fever already setting in up the far north?
I feel like I have a thousand projects all going at once. Jewelry, writing, reading, knitting, crocheting, redoing my kitchen, putting up crown molding, doing repairs, baking, cooking, trying to get some paying work, etc., etc., etc.
Would Yoko have gotten with Lennon if he had jotted down notes about Come Together, or if he only imagined Imagine, or in his life had only considered the idea of In My Life?
No.
The doing of Lennon, the finishing, the accomplishing, is what gathered he and his mates into being recognized. A great mass of others who had no identity of their own, sought identity in Lennon's accomplishment. Fans fainted, desperate for meaning that they handed over to the Beatles for definition. Those who would not do, who only had ideas, gave themselves wholly to those who did, who produced, who made.
We can even say that was only the doing of Lennon that gave any substance to the mere ideas of Ono.
She is a wisp of a real human, bearing celebrity purely because someone else actually did something very amazing and she fell in love with that doing and pulled it into herself.
(S)he who begins much, accomplishes little.
Not true with imaginary projects. They are begun, in progress and finished all at the same time.
"She is a wisp of a real human, bearing celebrity purely because someone else actually did something very amazing and she fell in love with that doing and pulled it into herself."
Not so. Her work is diminished because people idolize John. It keeps people from seeing her. As she says here, she was erased.
She had a reputation as an artist before John met her. That's how he met her and part of why he became interested in her. Many of the things we associate with him have to do with how he changed in partnership with her.
"Ono is (or at least was) a terrible person...."
Do you personally know her? What about her now or formerly do you know to be "terrible"?
"...who made truly awful art."
This is a matter of taste. I'm not terribly familiar with her conceptual art pieces, though I've read about some of them, but her music-making--which, in my callow youth, I detested--is actually quite compelling. I realized that some years ago when I was browsing at a record store (remember those?) on Avenue A between 5th and 4th Streets, on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Ono's box set of recordings was then new, and the clerk was playing it. I found myself hypnotized by what most, frankly, would consider to be caterwauling.
But then, a lot of caterwauling is good, and good for you!
(She influenced the B-52s, which may or may not be obvious to most.)
Guys stick with one project.
OK....if I squint, and tilt my head to the right...I can kinda see a penis joke.
So, is this what the Supreme Court is all about?? They sit around slicing, and dicing words, and sentences until they have a majority opinion (or a penis joke).
No wonder they teach it as Con Law!!
"Not so. Her work is diminished because people idolize John."
Good point, and I was wrong to say what I did in that part.
I think much of our understanding of her is shaped by how she changed him, and that tends to dominate the perspectives of those of us who don't know her except through her impact on him. That's my mistake here.
But, again, it was the doing that attracted both to each other. So, that part still stands.
I have a lot of blog ideas, after all. But hardly anyone visits my blog because I am terrible about actually getting to blogging. I even have a file with blog topics for future writing. But I never write them.
So, I hang out here. Your actual blogging is much better than my imagined blogging.
There's a reason her name has become an epithet and it's not only because she "broke up the Beatles', which she didn't do.
It's a poseur hoping to level up in reputation by riding on the coattails of genius. All while deluding herself that she is an artistic equal.
Disagree? Try arguing that her work has even a fraction of the merit of John's. Or even Ringo's.
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.
Her contribution to music was changing the idea from:
"Oh, no we can't record that"
to:
"Look, some yoko bought it!"
I'm not quite as clever as you presume rhhardin is!
"OK....if I squint..."
Is that a penis joke?
Not so. Her work is diminished because people idolize John. It keeps people from seeing her. As she says here, she was erased.
Her work is diminished because it frankly isn't very good.
"I'm not quite as clever as you presume rhhardin is!"
It's not a presumption. I have about 8 years of evidence.
I do not know Ono. The most damning source I've read is Bob Spitz' biography of the Beatles. Read about her life in Kyoto in the early 60's. Indifferent mother, faithless lover, narcissist of the first order. "I was always having abortions because I was too neurotic to take precautions." I'm sure there is another side to the story, but Spitz' book is well sourced.
"Guys stick with one project."
If true, then theoretically women would be better presidents. Multitasking being the key to efficiency ... or not.
ok, women would just be better presidents regardless. :-P
carry on
"If true, then theoretically..."
This.
Why do women like to live in the world of 'if'? If only, rhetorically?
If I only knew.
If my sister had a pair, she'd be my brother.
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?feature=player_
detailpage&v=
nT6325bmcsQ#t=257s
..describes things that could be done but are too tedious or too hard to do, and things that are completely impossible.
"You know how long 'The Oral History' is now?
No, I don't.. but ah..
One million two hundred thousand words long.. that's over three times longer than the holy bible."
I like Yoko Ono.
Sigh.
Not so. Her work is diminished because people idolize John. It keeps people from seeing her. As she says here, she was erased.
All my instincts tell me that Althouse is right. I like her.
For now I'm just trying to find the original release date to my top rated itunes.. so i can make better use of the playlists.
After that I'll move on the genres.
I'm thinking of consolidating them using the "smart" playlist maker instead of changing them.. that would take too long.
"smart" is in quotes because if it was truly smart it would be a music database.
rh hides it very well ;)
Lennon fancied himself an intellectual, which he was not, so he dropped his wife for someone who fancied herself an artist, which she was not.
Together, they made really stupid music.
Mostly I'm kind of sad that no one noticed my long set up (ha!) to what really was itself just another penis joke.
"rh hides it very well ;)"
Long ago, rh annoyed me. Everything always seemed off. Why was he doing that? Gradually, I came to understand that he was always saying something quite specific, simple, and smart.
Take my advice: If you are reading rh, assume that it's brilliant and take responsibility for understanding it. Don't shrug and move on. He made it short, so use the extra time he left you with to understand it.
"Mostly I'm kind of sad that no one noticed my long set up (ha!) to what really was itself just another penis joke."
I see I stepped on your penis joke. Sorry for the deflation.
"Sorry for the deflation."
Althouse, everytime you say something positive re: liberals/Dems your conservative readership is deflated lol.
Just sayin'
"Imagine all the unwritten books. Have you read them?"
No, I have unread them. All of them.
We have a thread about Yoko Ono, and eight references to penis jokes.
Funny - I was thinking today of what's wrong with Baby Boomers and Yoko wandered in there somewhere. Repellent human being. Feces comes to mind, mostly. "Look at me, running around with another woman's husband, talking of 'love'." I find it fascinating how easily Boomers put the betrayed out of their minds to worship someone. The ultimate followers, they are. Brain dead. Everyone, and everything, they've betrayed - as a generation - is just "erased."
I see her, Ann, as I see everyone, and I'm not impressed.
Like I said, feces - calling itself gold - that's the Boomer way,...
Yokois as close to a real-life zombie we have:
she has been feeding off the corpse of John Lennon for 30 years.
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