=An Alphabet of My Creative Icons=

Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo, Japan. The date was February 18, 1933.

Her father was a banker, a descendant of samurai scholars, and moved the family to San Francisco when Yoko was two.  She took piano lessons at age four. The family later returned to Tokyo and Yoko had the misfortune of experiencing the nightmarish fire bombing of that city during World War II, an act of state-sponsored terrorism against a civilian population that would have been judged a war crime had the United States lost the war.

Anyway, her family, once well-off, were reduced to begging for food. Her father vanished. Yoko learned three things: humility, that war is never the answer, what it’s like to be an outsider.

She was the first woman accepted into the philosophy department at her university. She was once a classmate of the future Emperor of Japan.

She returned to America after the war. She enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College.  Her father had by that  point returned just in time to disapprove of Yoko’s bohemian lifestyle choices.

She was married to a Japanese experimental composer. She was hospitalized in a mental institution for depression. Her name “Yoko” means “ocean-child.” She married an American jazz musician. She had a daughter. She divorced again and was accused of being an unfit mother. She lost custody of their child. She wouldn’t see her daughter again until she was sixty-five.

Yoko Ono: I’m kind of honored to be a dragon lady. The dragon is a very powerful, mythical animal.

She became friends with George Maciunas and was loosely associated with his Fluxus movement. John Cage was an early mentor. She was the only woman artist to perform her conceptual art at Gustav Metzger’s “Destruction in Art Symposium” in the early 1960s. She built a respected reputation in the New York art world by turning her loft apartment into a gallery showcasing her own work and the work of other young artists and musicians. She supported herself working as a secretary and giving lessons on traditional Japanese arts at the Japan Society.

Her work “Cut Piece,” where she sits in a chair and invites audience members to cut away her clothing with a scissors, became legendary. She reprised the piece at age 70.

Her book of conceptual art instructions “Grapefruit” has become a classic. “Hide and Seek” is one of the exercises. The instructions are:

1. Hide until everybody goes home.

2. Hide until everybody forgets about you.

3. Hide until everybody dies.

Yoko Ono: It’s a waste of time to think that if you colored a painting red what might have happened if you painted it black.

She made experimental films, including one of buttocks walking on a treadmill.

She was influenced musically by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. She had her first public music performance at Carnegie Recital Hall. She was twenty-eight. Her later musical work with the Plastic Ono Band influenced a whole bunch of bands, including Barenaked Ladies, Siouxsie Sioux, and the B-52s.

Her social activism is legendary.

Yoko Ono: You change the world by being yourself.

Oh, and she was once married to John Lennon, one of the Beatles.

Yoko Ono: Reality is elastic and I want to see how elastic it can be, you know?