In the winter of 2021, Guitarist Michael Nesmith of The Monkees passed away.
The best memories from the last century are gradually moving away from us. This reminds people of another band that also made the 20th century shine, the Beatles.
This cold December, a documentary called Beatles: Get Back was released in the UK.
In 1980, also in an equally cold December, Beatles member John Lennon was shot dead by fanatic Mark Chapman on his way home with his Japanese wife Yoko Ono.
In 2007, when Yoko Ono, 75, released Yes, I'm a witch, everything was in a trance.
Until now, Yoko Ono, who has been described by everyone as a "destroyed Beatle" and "sinner", looks like "John of Success, John of Defeat" throughout her life. Whether she herself is wonderful or not, her whole life seems to be difficult to relate only to herself.
After listening to Yoko Ono's "Yes, I Am a Witch", a netizen wrote the following paragraph:
Born into a top Japanese family, living in Japan and the United States, having had 3 husbands, was banned and awarded the Golden Lion Award, and influenced John Lennon for the rest of his life... This woman, after leaving aside the single label of "The Widow of John Lennon", how else can she be seen?
Yoko Ono, born in 1933, had a family background unmatched by ordinary people— her great-grandfather had promoted the fall of the curtain and was entrusted with a major role by Emperor Meiji; her maternal great-grandfather was Yasuda Zenjiro, the progenitor of Japan's Yasuda chaebol (after Yasuda's death, he counted his property, equivalent to 1/8 of the Japanese national budget at that time); her grandfather received a doctorate in 1890, was one of the first people in Japan to have this degree, and became president of the Societe Generale Bank in 1896.
Yoko, who has a prosperous family, has been traveling to Japan and the United States with her working parents since she was a child. At the age of 5, she entered the Imperial Family College, the Gakuin Academy, and was in the same window as Akihito and Imperial Brother Yoshimiya, who were still crown princes at the time.
Yoko Ono and Yoshimiya's experience of growing up together has made the two people more and more intimate. It is said that the two often composed japanese songs and poems together on campus, and Yoko Ono was once rumored to be the "first love" of the royal family.
However, Yoko Ono has been different since she was a child. When she was a child, she went to the United States, so she was not willing to stay in Japan and live the traditional girl's life of a husband and a godson. In 1952, at the age of 19, Yoko Ono went to the United States again to study philosophy. At that time, the philosophy department had basically no female faces, let alone Asian girls from foreign countries.
Yoko Ono's father loves Western classical music, and her mother has a deep knowledge of traditional Japanese musical instruments.
The term "avant-garde artist" may not be familiar to the general public, but it is an advanced force leading world art. John Lennon's work "Imagine" is still regarded as a treasure, and this song, according to John himself, was inspired by Yoko Ono's earlier work "Grapefruit".
However, this collection of poems full of whimsy was completed and left unnoticed.
People tend to express their feelings for familiar works of art, so the beautiful fruits that are labeled "rebellious and unpopular" can only be shelved.
In 1964, Yoko Ono attracted the attention of the world in another way. "Slices" – Yoko Ono sits on the stage in Carnegie's recital hall, and the audience goes on stage one by one, cutting her clothes one by one with scissors until she is completely naked.
"Come, cut off my clothes, wherever you want, and then, please give this fragment to your beloved."
One of the avant-garde artists and a supporter of the Fluxus, Yoko Ono achieved the first milestone of her career with this performance art that "can be interpreted at will". At the same time, she was also ridiculed and resisted by a group of artists from Japan because of some "excessive" forms of expression at that time.
Before meeting John Lennon, Yoko Ono had two more marriages. She attempted suicide at the age of 29 and was admitted to a mental hospital. Her second husband, disguised as an attending doctor from New York, "snatched" Yoko from a mental hospital and "captured" her heart at the same time.
Yoko gave birth to her first daughter with her second husband, and it was at this time that Yoko, a new mother, experienced a life experience that was very different from the past. Pain and happiness are intertwined, which led her to make the above work - leaving her hair, fingerprints, and various marks when she first became a mother, so as to record a new stage of life as a mother.
It is not so much that meeting John Lennon makes Yoko Ono "fly up the branches and become a phoenix", but rather that the encounter of two people makes a huge change in each other's lives. When the two married, Yoko Ono changed her name to Yoko Ono Lennon, and John Lennon, who married Yoko, also changed her name to John Winston Ono Lennon.
Yoko Ono, who grew up in the midst of war, has a very strong belief in "anti-war", and this idea is also infused into her various works.
After their marriage, Yoko Ono and John Lennon devoted more energy to anti-war activities.
The two also set their honeymoon as an "anti-war theme" — they spent a week in their bed at the Hilton Hotel, while being interviewed by all the media and defining it as a "peace operation in bed." As an avant-garde artist, Yoko Ono was born so different, but once she "hooked up" with world-class idol John Lennon, everything was not so pure and simple. The "critical hit" from public opinion can naturally be imagined.
However, the earth-shattering marriage with John came to an abrupt end because of the shooting that night in 1980.
Yoko Ono's life continues, in other words, the excitement may have just begun.
In 2003, at the age of 70, Yoko Ono performed "Slice" again. After 37 years, Yoko Ono, who was slowly stripped of her clothes again, said: "The first time I did this, I was still very young, and my heart was full of resentment and uneasiness. Now I am doing this with love for myself and the world. ”
Her concern for world peace and the common good has never stopped. In 2014, she issued an open letter calling on Japan to stop killing dolphins, and in the same year, she visited Hiroshima on Hiroshima's Anniversary day to pray for peace with the local population.
"I still have a profound hope and love for the world, and this hope is comparable to that of the Atlantic."
We love the elegant and kind Hepburn, we love the brother of a generation of style... But the world is so big, everyone is so different, there are too many loves that we don't understand and don't agree with, expressed in unique ways and by special people.
We can dislike them and have the right to express our likes and dislikes, but we need to admit that our "incomprehension" and "dislike" cannot erase their real light and beauty. We also need to admit that even people and things that we can't identify with can be very exciting.
End
Source | Tokyo New Youth
Author | Yao Yao
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