Ono at MIT & the MFA & on new CD
John Whelan
This excellent news article from the "Boston Phoenix"
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/top/documents/01967102.htm
Sight and sound
Yoko Ono at MIT and the MFA and on a new CD
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
Yoko Ono's new Blueprint for a Sunrise (Capitol) begins with a
jarring vignette of domestic violence. " You ungrateful bitch! " ,
she screams, assuming an angry man's voice. " I'm going to throw you
in a ditch! " Then there's a stabbing, and a bleeding female victim
is ridiculed as she attempts to crawl away. The scene concludes with
Ono chanting " Gotta kill, gotta kill, gotta kill! " as she launches
into " I Want You To Remember Me, " an improvised song that channels
blind masculine rage in allusions to Polyphemos and pleas for
recognition that are interspersed with Ono's trademark non-verbal
vocalise, all of it set to swirling, sci-fi textures of guitar and
keyboard.
This is a prickly, complicated start that's softened by the delicate
faux flamenco setting of " Is This What We Do " that follows. But Ono
maintains her theme, asking, " Is this what we do to a woman/She
gives us life/She gives us love/In return, we hurt her. " It's
exactly the kind of pointed, confrontational work we've come to
expect from Ono since the late 1960s, when she emerged from under the
umbrella of the New York-based Fluxus group of visual and performing
artists. Fluxus was a so-called anti-art movement that aimed to blur
lines between objects and the act of creation by demanding audience
participation. In the case of two of Ono's early installations, the
process of climbing a ladder and the act of dropping water onto a
sponge became part of the artworks themselves. Yet she does not
consider herself an adherent to Fluxus. " I was making art before
Fluxus and have continued long after it, " she asserts over the phone
from her New York office. " At the time, when there was a Fluxus
event, the same group of 20 or so of us would always go there because
artists need a convenient platform to do things. "
Fluxus or not, Ono has embraced that strain of art's inclination to
move between mediums at will. Although she's been known best for her
music ever since her initial collaboration with her late husband,
John Lennon, on 1968's Two Virgins (Capitol), Ono, who turned 68 this
year, has worked tirelessly in film, theater, performance art,
painting, and other modes for 40 years. On the heels of the just-
released Blueprint for a Sunrise, a major touring retrospective of
her art will arrive today (October 18) at MIT's List Visual Arts
Center. The show, which will be up through January 6, was organized
by the Japan Society of New York City; it includes some of her
earliest pieces as well as a room of recent efforts that range from
bronze sculptures to interactive installations to films. And this
weekend, the Museum of Fine Arts will be showing two programs of her
films: a selection of shorts on Saturday evening (she'll be present)
and " Walking on Thin Ice " and Imagine on Sunday afternoon.
But it's the room at the List, she says, that's " really the tip of
the iceberg of what I'm doing these days. I'm working in all sorts of
mediums, being very active, and making lots of big pieces that are
not presented there. "
For Ono, transitioning between visual and musical projects is
seamless. " I've read that the creative area for many composers and
artists is in the same district of the brain. So when they hear
music, it comes with colors, and when they're painting, they hear
music. In my case, that's very true. And I think that when you hear
my lyrics, they are kind of picturesque. "
The problem throughout Ono's musical history has been getting people
to listen. Her controversial visual pieces, like 1961's Painting To
Hammer a Nail In, which is exactly what it claims to be, have been
embraced more readily by the art world than her music has been taken
to heart by rock-and-rollers. There are two issues. First, many
adoring Beatles fans - millions, perhaps - wrongly believe she is the
reason their favorite band broke up, and they have never forgiven her
for it. " I've been labeled a dragon lady, which has put me through
some not very comfortable situations. " Second, Ono's highly original
use of her opera-trained voice as an instrument to convey emotions
through wordless sounds falls on unsympathetic ears. The idea that
she might be the flesh-and-blood corollary to the marvelously
expressive saxophones of the jazz improvisers Ornette Coleman and
John Coltrane has completely eluded those whose tastes have been
formed solely by rock and pop.
Ono has made some brilliant, unforgettable recordings since 1969,
when she and Lennon formed the Plastic Ono Band and cut Live Peace in
Toronto (Capitol), an enduring classic of politically charged avant-
rock. In 1981, the year after Lennon was murdered by a mad gunman on
the streets of New York, Ono reacted with Season of Glass, a raw,
heartrending statement of pain and confusion. Its cover is one of her
most potent images: the bloodstained eyeglasses Lennon wore when he
was killed placed next to a half-full water glass. Both objects are
set as a still life on a table in their apartment and photographed
with the New York skyline in the background. The follow-ups It's
Alright (I See Rainbows) and Starpeace (both on Rykodic) were slight
but well-intentioned aims at spreading positivism. Ono's next
release, 1995's Rising (Capitol), was her post-John musical
highpoint, blending elements of rock, jazz, textural music, and free
improvisation to fiery effect as she collaborated with her son Sean
Lennon's band IMA. Rising was followed by Ono's first major concert
tour in decades - an event she says is not likely to be repeated
because of the difficulties in air travel since the September 11
terrorist attack.
Several of the tracks on Blueprint for a Sunrise, which mixes live
and studio recordings, are from that 1995 tour, including the
shocking " I Want You To Remember Me. " The improvisation "
Mulberry " is the best of those concert recordings, capturing Ono and
Sean Lennon in the same dramatic, conversational heat they displayed
on stage during the tour's stop at the Paradise. From a childhood
recollection of picking mulberries to sustain her family during World
War II, Ono works her way into a fractured glossalalia of rising,
falling, sighing, cawing syllables - her voice ricocheting from the
sweet to the guttural and throaty - as Lennon strums, plucks,
scrapes, and yanks his guitar strings into a series of reciprocal
buzzes and hums. Their course is unpredictable, charged with
suspense - exactly the kind of work fans of free playing and artists
like Sonic Youth and Diamanda Galás (both influenced by Ono) will
embrace, but probably not right for the " I Wanna Hold Your Hand "
crowd.
Which is not to say that Blueprint for a Sunrise is all difficult
listening. " I Remember Everything " is a three-minute burst of
melody set to grinding guitars. " Wouldnit " is a swaggering little
pop tune full of dark irony. And " I'm Not Getting Enough " sets
female dissatisfaction to a reggae beat.
" I wanted the CD's performances to be a musical collage of my
life, " Ono explains. " I wanted to show it like a diary, so that's
why I used the live recordings and the studio. Sometimes we make
mistakes in public, and sometimes there are triumphs in private. "
Triumph over adversity is actually the theme at the heart of
Blueprint for a Sunrise. The songs form a cycle written from the same
feminist perspective that Ono has voiced since the '60s, about a
battered woman who in the midst of her suffering realizes her
strengths, uses them to liberate herself, and flourishes.
" I'm a woman, so that's why I've written from that perspective, "
she says. " But it's really about any underdog. It could be a guy who
can't deal with the situation that he's in and wants to get out but
might get killed because he wants to get out. Or it could be a small
country that is being colonized and wants to get out of the
colonization, so it gets bombed and then continues on. It's symbolic
of the suggestion that in being an underdog, you have to stand up for
yourself to get out of it - about escaping a cycle of being
victimized.
" I know some artists are changing the songs on their CDs coming out
because of what happened on September 11, and I was asked if I would
change any of mine. I know the world has changed. It might progress
into something beautiful, but it's not going to go back to what it
was like before September 11. But I don't have to change my CD
because it is exactly responding to the times. This theme will always
be meaningful. "
" Yes Yoko Ono, " a 40-year retrospective of Ono's visual art, runs
through January 6 at MIT's List Visual Arts Center in the Wiesner
Building, 20 Ames Street in Cambridge. Gallery hours are Tuesday
through Thursday from noon to 6, Friday from noon to 8, Saturdays and
Sundays from noon to 6. Call (617) 253-4680 or go to
http://web.mit.edu/lvac. Gallery talks are Wednesdays at noon and
Sundays at 2 p.m. A lecture with Yoko Ono this Saturday, October 20,
is sold out. The public opening reception is this Friday, October 19,
from 5:30 to 7:30.
Issue Date: October 18 - 25, 2001
--
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