Elena Rykova on Yoko Ono: Beyond a thought within imagination

BEYOND A THOUGHT WITHIN IMAGINATION Elena Rykova on Yoko Ono 2017 winter

Harvard University

PREFACE

if the world is a dream if the only truth is that there is none if each person sees the world around only through their own lens of perception if what I see is what I dream and what I dream is what I see if any person I meet is just a projection of my own thoughts primarily or by default then each and every thing is just my thought everything I feel, I see, I love is just a thought and nothing else do we exist beyond a thought? beneath a thought? above a thought? inside a thought? do we?

what if a thought is the only real space of our existence? its only proof?

E.R.

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK a) to reach odd number of pages at the end b) for good luck c) to meditate

GRAPEFRUIT Grapefruit is a hybrid of lemon and orange Y.O. Each time I pronounce the name of Yoko Ono’s book, I want to swallow it immediately: “Grapefruit.” Even if I say it only in my head: “Grapefruit.” The concentrate of flavor in the title reveals the main secret of the tiny artist’s book, where each letter, drawing or symbol illuminates its specific purpose: to influence imagination of a reader in a certain or uncertain way.

Pic. 1. The structure of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit.

Scores for Imagination – this is how I would determine the genre of Grapefruit pieces. Though, they are also called event scores – genre, which could be defined as texts or instructions proposing simple actions re-contextualized as performances. The origins of event scores lie in experiments of John Cage, followed by the formation of Fluxus movement1. The important idea of event scores is to be easily interpreted by any person by simply “doing it” – Ken Friedman, a member of Fluxus group, viewed this concept as musicality.

The basic approach of event scores, which resonates with Fluxus Manifesto in general, is to elevate the banal in order to be mindful of mundane and in addition, to frustrate the high culture of academic music and art.

Pic. 2. An excerpt of Fluxus Manifesto (1963) written by a Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas.

1

Interestingly enough, Yoko Ono didn’t attend informal lessons of John Cage but she was a

regular member of his circle of friends. Official connection between Yoko and Fluxus was established with the publication of several Ono’s pieces in the Fluxus newspaper in 1964, a year after the first published edition of Grapefruit in Japan.

While mentioned features of event scores stay true for Yoko’s text pieces, there is something more inside what makes them special. Like if to visualize several grapefruits, they will most likely be similar to each other, unless to peel them and more than that, taste them. Their flavors will depend on infinite differences in various conditions of cultivation and so many other reasons and consequences, which are certainly better described in The Complete Book of Fruits and Vegetables2.

I am convinced, in case of Yoko’s Grapefruit, it is the imagination of author, which makes the taste of texts so rich and exquisite. There is a need to clarify that I am not speaking about the richness of chosen words and phrases. It is not the texts themselves that I find uniquely beautiful and precious but the images they create in the minds of readers. Yoko encrypts images into sentences using the simplest words possible, which can be easily graspable even by a child. But the images to be deciphered are surreal, sophisticated and mysterious, sometimes funny, confusing or even embarrassing and always challenging and intriguing.

Often, when it comes to the intention of artists and creators, imagination of audience is undeservedly left outside. For instance, even educational curriculums at

2 The Complete Book of Fruits and Vegetables by Marilena Pistoia consists of paintings of virtually every plant used for food accompanied by information on the origins, histories, uses, nutritional characteristics, and horticulture of each.

music schools and conservatories3 are mostly aimed at developing factual and historical knowledge of students, their playing techniques and listening skills, like solfeggio and harmony. Rarely, mostly in instrumental classes, students might get lucky to know what the essence of interpretation is and where its power comes from4. Each mentioned component of educational process and thus, one’s skills and expertise, is undoubtedly important and necessary. However, my true belief is that plenitude of perception, vividness of interpretation, and abundance of listening experience in particular, all eventually depend on one’s ability to imagine and overall capacity of one’s imagination itself.

The main reason I chose Grapefruit as a subject for this essay is the potent influential energy of images behind Yoko’s texts that transcend rational thinking to the realm of one’s imagination. As if an architect, Yoko Ono creates a virtual space for shared imagination. She doesn’t simply describe what she sees but rather instructs the reader to design the image in their mind and then leaves them in that bizarre space to inhibit, explore it and keep animating, imagining it. Thereby, imaginations of Yoko and a reader meet each other on that virtual cloud of shared dreaming.

3 Since prior to Harvard University I’ve graduated from four different Russian and German music institutions, I find myself competent enough to critically generalize certain features of music education, relying on both my own personal experience and observation from the side.

4 An implied answer here is - imagination.

BOX PIECE Buy many dream boxes.

Ask your wife to select one.

Dream together.

1964 spring

Since Yoko operates just with simple words and notions, like sky, stars, wall, dawn, clock, moon, sun, fish etc., the moment when the reader starts to follow her on the way to the cloud is barely noticeable, it’s almost hypnotic. I, as a reader, begin to realize where I am in my mind only when being already within an image, at the last step of her instructions.

Significant role to play in the effectiveness of those directions gets the brevity of texts. Encapsulating the essence of encrypted feeling, they act as a trigger for a reader to recollect all kinds of memories connected to the imagined situation (with an exception for the section of the book On Films, which is comprised of longer narratives).

To come back to mentioned musicality, there are several attributes in Yoko’s compositions, which give a possibility to consider them as pieces of music on a conceptual level.5 First of all, I would point out temporality that is present at least on

5 Grapefruit is known as an early example of conceptual art. This is definitely a broader issue to explore in another essay, but for a temporary closure here, I would make a notice that due to the infinite variants of imagery resulting from Yoko’s verbal pieces – imagery that is proceeding

three correlated levels. The first one is actual time that one needs to read the instruction of the piece. Second starts right after, when a person begins to dwell inside the image – the time of daydreaming. The third mode involves repercussion of some parts of instructions or even re-reading them combined with visualization at the same time. If in some cases, actual execution of the instruction seems to be possible then also the fourth flow of time could be drawn out: the duration of the performance.

To proceed on musical features, some pieces also suggest specific acoustic phenomenon. For instance, the following piece by Yoko:

VOICE PIECE FOR SOPRANO Scream.

1. against the wind 2. against the wall 3. against the sky 1961 autumn

This piece as most of other Yoko’s texts is more intriguing than it seems at first glance. Already in the title, she gives the starting set-up for a scenery: most likely, high and loud female voice screaming. However, the secret of Yoko’s texts reveals itself

to exist in a live-mode as a subject to change, animated and observed by the participant and partly controlled by the author – and its temporal and spatial qualities, the definition of origins of the genre and which art it belongs to become rather complicated and somewhat ambivalent to decide on.

beyond, in the process of imagining them; in other words, it matters what happens after the scenery of the image is complete.

“Scream against the wind” – this instruction suggests multiple directionality. The action of screaming, vectored in itself, now meets unpredictability of a natural force, which can take the sound in all possible and impossible directions. Just the image of the wind is already so powerful by itself that we’re being reminded of the physical sensation of exposure to the wind straight away when imagining it. For instance, my mind starts to wonder: how strong the wind is, how far it takes the voice (most likely, my own voice6), do I hear the echo or not – the chain of questions forms itself in infinite progression. Due to the fact that the image of the wind is so common that we barely pay attention to it in daily life unless it makes us somewhat uncomfortable or in contrast gives us a particularly pleasant feeling of breeze, it stays unnoticeable. This is true for any other Yoko’s favorite images: stars, snow, water, sounds of a city, silence in the room… But this is where the mystery resides, the mystery of truth: “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”7

6 Here I refer to the phenomenon of the listener’s cords being strained in the same way as the cords of a singer, for example, in the concert situation. “When we listen to another bodily being, we experience his voice with our whole body; it is not just a matter of listening with the ears” (Empathetic Listening: Toward a Bodily-Based Understanding of a Singer’s Vocal Interpretation, Anne Tarvainen) 7 The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde

“What is mysterious [here and after italics are by J.P.K.] is that we can ascertain anything we are willing to call “truth” about real things. For any attempt at determining this kind of truth, sooner or later, requires the use of our senses… Ultimately, we must look at the thing we want to understand – either directly with our eyes or indirectly by way of the output of cloud chambers or electron microscope.”8 In her pieces, Yoko outlines an abstract geometry of space-time for her readers to dream. And the construction of her texts, their structure, a lot reminds me of boundary conditions for mathematical problems. I’m inclined to argue that in some ways they are indeed the abstract problems to solve and each of them has as many solutions as there are minds working on imagining them. Twisting another quote from The Art of Mathematics mentioned above, Yoko may have actually developed this peculiar kind of problem, “which possesses both features of originality and significance and simultaneously falls within the scope of the researcher’s power to find a solution”.9 I very much like the analogy: reader as a researcher. I am convinced, this is exactly how we start to feel and act once interacting with Yoko’s texts – exploring our own integrity by opening-up and bending our thinking habits.

Coming back to screaming against the wind, one might not be able to see the image of wind without naturally picturing something else affected by it. In case of this

8 The Art of Mathematics, Jerry P. King (p.31) 9 The Art of Mathematics, Jerry P. King (p.35)

specific Yoko’s piece we are dealing with two images without substance: sound and wind somehow transforming each other10. Noticing unnoticeable is the red line weaving through Grapefruit. My own practice of thinking on Yoko Ono’s pieces, reading and looking at them repeatedly, coincides with my drawing experience and reminds me of specific lines from the book The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nikolaïdes: “Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see – to see correctly – and that means a good deal than merely looking with the eye. The sort of ‘seeing’ I mean is an observation that utilizes as many of the five senses as can reach through the eye at one time.”11 The act of drawing is at the same time the act of imagining and, thus, ‘seeing’ (I will continue using quotation marks when meaning the word seeing in Nikolaïdes’ interpretation – E.R.). Subtract an immediate translation onto paper from the act of drawing and we are left with imagination alone - we are left one on one with images.

“The air is thick with images – time made dense with each event and its image, a soup, a fog, as if one could take a sheet of paper and swing it through the air, catching the images as they crashed into it.”12 “It is not a case of thousands of eyes looking at an object – we all look at the tree and see it. But it is also the tree projecting itself again

10 What if screaming is so powerful that it causes the change in the wind’s direction or even makes it disappear? In the reality of imagination natural laws are of another nature and modifiable at any moment.

11 The Natural Way to Draw, Kimon Nikolaïdes (p.5) 12 Six Drawing Lessons, William Kentridge (p.25)

and again, directed at you, now you, now you. AN ENDLESS PROMISCUITY OF PROJECTIONS [capital letters by W.K.].”13 “Let us see where we are. Both receiving all the projections that come toward us, listening, a receiving station, scanning the earth for reports of the world, bombarded by particles of information we cannot escape. And transmitting, projecting, broadcasting ourselves continually. Here I am. HERE I AM. Here I am.”14 The mentioned lines by William Kentridge make a bridge in my mind to the Earth piece by Yoko Ono:

EARTH PIECE Listen to the sound of the earth turning.

1963 spring

While imagining a specific situation consciously, according to the author’s instructions, we are nearly being watched by Yoko’s eye, existing in our minds as a reoccurring question: “Is the way I imagine close to the way she meant it to be?”. The reality is that there is no single answer. The solution for the problem lies on the plane outside of a positive-negative value system. The question by itself proves the presence

13 Six Drawing Lessons, William Kentridge (p.23-24) 14 Six Drawing Lessons, William Kentridge (p.25)

of self-reflection, self-observation within a process, the unique moment of trying to look at ourselves from outside – in other words, the presence of critical thinking, the precious moment of doubt.

FALLING PIECE Go outside of you.

Look at yourself walking down the street.

Make yourself tumble on a stone and fall.

Watch it.

Watch other people looking.

Observe carefully how you fall.

How long it takes and in what rhythm you fall.

Observe seeing a slow-motion film.

1964 spring

MIRROR PIECE Instead of obtaining a mirror, Obtain a person.

Look into him.

Use different people.

Old, young, fat, small, etc.

1964 spring

Bringing William Kentridge in our Grapefruit discussion can be explained by my intention to highlight the importance of the reader’s own presence. I believe, the awareness of it is being built up step by step, right in-between the lines of Yoko’s instructions. “There are words themselves, and their syntax and grammar and their relation to the outside world. But there is also the discipline of the medium, that which is in between the words – the devices which one uses to either pin the words more closely to the world outside or to encourage the listener to make the connection, to convince them of what I say.”15 When reading and re-reading Yoko’s poems, each time I, as a reader, naturally make a pause or hold fermata in a different place. By doing so, I distribute the accent to a new spot, highlight another part of the scenery, which helps me to imagine the picture of a whole with more details, more layers existing at once. The gaps between the words are the moments of suspension to grasp this image, to feel it, as if it was a little insect moving inside a clenched fist, and then let it go again in order to grasp it once more after another image, another word comes into play, and the same way it continues as if prescribed by Gertrude Stein’s If I told him: “Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all. Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.” 16

15 Six Drawing Lessons, William Kentridge (p.11-12) 16 If I told him, A completed portrait of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, 1905

The hidden mechanism of repetition, which in some ways could be also considered as one of musical features, is implanted into Yoko Ono’s compositions in the most genuine and extraordinary way: it is there but it is totally invisible. Repeating is something we, readers, do as if we were programmed to execute it but there is no literal instruction to repeat or how to perform the repetition. When taking a bite of a fruit, one needs to chew it for a while and only then they swallow. The same happens with a sentence: we take a bite of it – a phrase or a word, then take another one integrating repetition (or chewing) when needed as long as necessary. A mechanism of implied repetition in Grapefruit serves as a method of tasting and understanding the material. If boundary conditions of Yoko’s piece consist of entities without substance, like the one with wind and sound, then by repeating the instruction or re-emphasizing it, our mind eventually becomes capable of finding the solution to envision it with the help of our memory.

According to Peter Gärdenfors, there are three main types of memory: episodic, procedural, and semantic. Accordingly, “procedural memory is the implicit knowledge that activates habitual patterns of movement, like riding a bike. The semantic memory, however, is explicit and enables the categorization of different bodies of knowledge according to their similarities and differences, like knowing what a “cat” is when we meet one. Episodic memory is the ability to remember individual events in life, like remembering the neighbors’ cat. For that reason, episodic memory “presumes detached

representation and a personal identity.”17 Thereby, to create a full image, we operate with memories connected to all five senses. But once the process of imagination is launched, the initial bonds with senses disappear, the new connections might be established or originated. “Gärdenfors defines imagination as a human ability to be detached from the senses. Like perceptions, “imaginations” are representations; accordingly, one can go beyond the here and now and be able to foresee.”18 “The detached representation teaches possible variations of using a concrete object beyond its already learned functions. In it, the three types of memory cooperate in creating new modes of behaving. The different modes of memory are employed together towards a new process of thinking.”19 Bringing all arguments and analogies together, I am inclined to think that Grapefruit texts indeed elaborate on a new mode of thinking, or an alternative thinking process. Extrapolative thinking – this is how I would call this specific way to reach and experience unfamiliar or new by operating with, extending and projecting already known values, notions and memories via the process of imagination.

Re-reading Yoko’s poems, I realize that each time I want to imagine them differently, if not entirely new, at least something should happen in a different way. In

17 Embodied Philosophy in Dance, Einav Katan-Schmid, (p.67) 18 Embodied Philosophy in Dance, Einav Katan-Schmid (p.66) 19 Embodied Philosophy in Dance, Einav Katan-Schmid (p.67-68)

this sense, I find certain features of her approach and intentions somewhat similar to certain autistic traits, for instance, association of autistic traits with higher numbers of unusual answers when generating novel ideas for creative problem solving.20 Furthermore, most of Yoko’s tasks are to be imagined or performed alone and overall, even if another person is to be present, the focus remains on reader’s personal experience. The main point of Grapefruit reader’s core experience is reaching another level of awareness within themselves by tuning their senses to as many unusual novel frequencies as possible.

MAP PIECE Draw a map to get lost.

1964 spring

When being exposed to new experiences, almost by default, carefully shaped by cultural and academic education, we are inclined to search for help, for instructions.

Yoko Ono plays a game with her audience giving the desired instructions, which occur

20 Several tests of Divergent Thinking are described in the paper The Relationship Between Subthreshold Autistic Traits, Ambiguous Figure Perception and Divergent Thinking by Catherine Best, Shruti Arora, Fiona Porter, Martin Doherty. In one of the experiments, participants were asked to provide as many of alternative uses of a paperclip as possible. As a result, participants with autistic traits showed much higher number of unusual creative responses, for example, to unwind a paperclip and use it to remove the splinters from a wound if sterilize it first or to use it as a weight for the front of a paper airplane etc.

to be more of “a map to get lost” than a highly effective route from point A to point B. In reality, we, readers, are given the instructions to find our own way to look at things, to find our own angle of observation. One of the main differences, as I see it, between a child and an adult is that children have not yet developed patterns of habits, that is why they still behave somewhat unpredictably and keep altering adult’s reality in a surprising way. For me, Grapefruit poses a chain of primary questions: how can I possibly unlearn those habits? Am I able to genuinely surprise myself again? How is it possible to let go of myself and start thinking in an unfamiliar way? The answer that I hear from the pages of Grapefruit is: imagine, imagine again, imagine more.21

CLOUD PIECE22 Imagine the clouds dripping.

Dig a hole in the garden to put them in.

1963 spring

The longer I read and think on Yoko’s poems, the more sensitive (even hypersensitive) and vulnerable I become to the world and things around me. I must

21 At this moment, you may play Imagine by John Lennon as a tacit soundtrack for this essay.

22 Since you are probably playing the song Imagine right now, I thought it would be referential to quote Cloud Piece by Yoko, as it was one of the main texts that inspired John Lennon to write an album of the same name and it was reproduced on the back cover of the original Imagine LP.

admit, it is a very strange feeling of something that was once forgotten: this peculiar state of being naturally careful and attentive to details, objects, sounds and smells, light and colors, my own thoughts and interactions with people. By “naturally” I mean that there is no need to remind myself of acting or thinking this way, it just happens by itself after interacting with Yoko Ono’s book for a while. Obviously, it is a very personal reaction but her book itself implies personal investigation. And in general, the way we feel at each moment determines how we perceive the world around us, how resonant we are to the events, macro and micro, happening all the time.

One more important feature of Grapefruit that I haven’t mentioned yet is an exquisite sense of Yoko’s humor. This ingredient is defining for the overall taste of the book. Without humor the content and her intention could be easily misread as presumptuous. But with the ability to laugh at herself, at her own crazy ideas and images, Yoko invites us, readers, to do the same.

ANNOUNCEMENT PIECE I Give death announcements each time you move instead of giving announcements of the change of address.

Send the same when you die.

1962 summer

ANNOUNCEMENT PIECE II Give a moving announcement each time you die.

1963 summer

There are two more characteristics, which could be felt even without knowing that Yoko is also a peace activist. These are ultimate kindness and love to the subject of each poem, to the world and humanity as a whole. In a playful way, Yoko invites the reader to communicate with the world, draw no difference when interacting with a person, a stone, a piece of wood, a painting or a snowflake. It seems, her implication is: only if there is no hierarchical difference, judgement of any kind upon- or division between animate and inanimate essences, there could be a place for hope to find or create a shared understanding between each other, to imagine a peaceful world. No doubt, it sounds as pristine utopia. But I would say, it could be a mandatory utopia to bear in mind to stay‌ human. This concept stays in the backstage area of her scenery all the time, though never pronounced in capital letters as no one likes to be told what to do and how to act, that’s why Yoko lets people decide on their own way to imagine, and I believe that it is the moment when transformative force encrypted beyond her thoughts and ideas comes into power reviving those hearts, which are willing to be opened.

We act as architects when designing scenery for Yoko’s pieces, we are to assign colors, smells and sizes like painters; as film directors, we make the envisioned image

moving into development and we participate in the imagined event as actors and spectators. We listen to the sound and silence attentively and translate the meaning and symbols into those images as if interpreting poetry. In imaginary situations, we ourselves move and act as we were dancers. In fact, we are living all these roles at the same time when we imagine things. In our imagination we simply fly, we are being who we are and we are whoever we want to be. In this light, Yoko’s division of the book into nine sections (see Pic.1) seems natural.

FLY PIECE

Fly.

1963 summer

Behind each Yoko’s poem there is a certain action, an encrypted gesture. The image behind the text is moving and by experiencing it, we let it influence the reality and our perception of reality. Once we imagine something, flying in our minds wherever Yoko sends us to, and coming back with a new feeling within ourselves, the virtuality of the experienced situation is somewhat questioned by doubt. If thinking and feeling within the projected image somehow changes our emotional or physical state in the known reality (say, we become excited or melancholy), the ghost of transcendence inevitably invades the mind, bringing awareness of its own power.

“The thing we call gesture is as separate from the substance through which it acts as the wind is from the trees that it bends…Become aware of the gesture, which is a thing in itself without substance.”23 Nikolaïdes claims that in order to grasp the gesture one needs to feel the impulse behind it, which could mean also drawing something that might happen next, foreseeing it or, in other words, imagining it.

“Imagine the sound of the stone aging the room breathing the snow falling…”24 How much are we willing to seek for the impulse behind the gesture, whatever this gesture occurs to be? We master our skill to deal directly with consequences but most likely, the reason and often a solution or the way to understand the event, a person, an object – about anything – could be found beyond, wherever beyond is in the space-time geometry of our perception.

MASK PIECE I Make a mask larger than your face.

Polish the mask every day.

In the morning, wash the mask instead of your face.

23 The Natural Way to Draw, Kimon Nikolaïdes (p.26) 24 The lines from different Yoko’s poems.

When somebody wants to kiss you, let the person kiss the mask instead.

1961 winter

For instance, this piece speaks to me about transparency in communication with people, all possible fears of being misunderstood or rejected; it transmits the feeling of actual loneliness behind the image, which on its surface sounds funny. It is about living life of someone else instead their own, about decisions being made or avoided.

Yoko’s poems, as I see and feel them, are far beyond the disciplines they are assigned to: music, painting, dance. They are the question marks of our vitality as humans without any pretension to be so: one always has a choice whether to notice it or pass by.

TUNAFISH SANDWICH PIECE Imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time.

Let them shine for one hour.

Then, let them gradually melt into the sky.

Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.

1964 spring

DRINKING PIECE FOR ORCHESTRA Imagine letting a goldfish swim across the sky.

Let it swim from the West to the East.

Drink a liter of water.

Imagine a goldfish swim across the sky.

Let it swim from the East to the West.

1963 spring

Or perhaps, this is all just about molecules of oxygen and hydrogen voluntarily and involuntarily re-contextualized into celestial dome in regard to these specific fish species, never mind...

still 2017, still winter