![]() If people forget about it, remind them of it and keep telling. If people do not ask about it, draw their attention to it and tell. ![]() If people ask you about it, make a story and tell. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.” “Listen to the sound of the earth turning.” “Bandage any part of your body. In Grapefruit, published in 1964, Ono shares what she called scores, which you are encouraged to act out. But previous to that, she engaged in a more inward-facing practice. In the background, with the Vietnam War raging far away from the West, Ono’s artwork encouraged an imagining of world peace – an end to war. Where, arduously, we search for self-esteem that somewhere along the way seems to have tumbled down a big black hole, if indeed it was ever there to begin with. It is something we struggle with intensely in Western society, so much so that there are whole sections of bookshops devoted to helping us find inner acceptance. Away from the media circus and the subverted billboards she created with Lennon, here she asks people to wish for something altogether simpler – a quiet, internalised peace. If you are not peaceful, you will not see peace.” Ono has been asking us to “imagine peace” for more than half a century. Say as many times as you can to yourself: I love you, I forgive you, I accept you 100 per cent.” In another post, she said, “If you are peaceful, you will see how peaceful the world is already. Fast-forwarding to the modern era, on Twitter she suggests, “Start with yourself. She was, it was now plain to see, none of those things. Get Back destroys the misogynist image that millions had of her as an unwanted interloper, an interrupter, a disruptive influence on Lennon, a distraction in the studio. In the midst of a group of powerful men, she takes a step back – contented and self-sufficient – displaying an inner peace. ![]() So instead of trying to capture the attention of the men or serve them, apart from when she joins in with one session, wailing into the microphone, Ono goes inward. Was Ono, who had created a successful career as a contemporary artist by this point, engaging in a performance piece? A woman surrounded by men, she symbolises all the times women have found themselves in this situation and felt the need to prove themselves, be seen. Hess further wrote that she was “impressed by her stamina, then entranced by the provocation of her existence and ultimately dazzled by her performance.” When confronted with footage of the most famous band in the world almost breaking up, getting back together, then writing a tranche of enough hits for both Let It Be and their last album, 1969’s Abbey Road, Hess “couldn’t stop watching Yoko Ono sitting around, doing nothing”. In a piece for the New York Times, called “ The Sublime Spectacle of Yoko Ono Disrupting the Beatles”, Amanda Hess writes that, at first, she was unnerved by what she saw: “Why is she there? I pleaded with my television set.” But as Get Back goes on, she becomes impressed with Ono’s defiance and her deference grows – woman to woman. ![]() Photo by Miguel Angel Valero courtesy of Yoko Ono. ![]()
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