Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist who is also known for her work in performance art and filmmaking. She performs in both English and Japanese. She is noted for being the second wife and widow of singer-songwriter John Lennon of the Beatles.
Ono grew up in Tokyo and studied at Gakushuin. She withdrew from her course after two years and rejoined her family in New York in 1953. She spent some time at Sarah Lawrence College, and then became involved in New York City's downtown artists scene, including the Fluxus group. She first met Lennon in 1966 at her own art exhibition in London, and they became a couple in 1968. With their performance Bed-Ins for Peace in Amsterdam and Montreal in 1969, Ono and Lennon famously used their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She brought feminism to the forefront in her music, influencing artists as diverse as the B-52s and Meredith Monk. Ono achieved commercial and critical acclaim in 1980 with the chart-topping album Double Fantasy, a collaboration with Lennon that was released three weeks before his death.
Public appreciation of Ono's work has shifted over time and was helped by a retrospective at a Whitney Museum branch in 1989 and the 1992 release of the six-disc box set Onobox. Retrospectives of her artwork have also been presented at the Japan Society in New York City in 2001, in Bielefeld, Germany, and the UK in 2008, Frankfurt, and Bilbao, Spain, in 2013 and MOMA in New York City in 2015. She received a Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2009 and the 2012 Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria's highest award for applied contemporary art.
As Lennon's widow, Ono works to preserve his legacy. She funded Strawberry Fields in Manhattan's Central Park, the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, and the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan . She has made significant philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace, Philippine and Japan disaster relief, and other causes. In 2012 Yoko Ono received the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award endowed by Alexandra Hildebrandt. The award is given annually in recognition of extraordinary, non-violent commitment to human rights. Ono continued her social activism when she inaugurated a biennial $50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace in 2002. She also co-founded the group Artists Against Fracking in 2012. She has a daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox, from her marriage to Anthony Cox and a son, Sean Taro Ono Lennon, from her marriage to Lennon. Ono collaborates musically with Sean.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
A line written by Ono many years before, and quoted by Lennon in December 1980, as quoted in All We Are Saying : The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (2000) by John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, p. 16.
Source: Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings
Variant: We're all water from different rivers,
That's why it's so easy to meet,
We're all water in this vast, vast ocean,
Someday we'll evaporate together.
9 June 2009.
Twitter messages
“I gave you my life, you gave me my life.
Like a gush of wind in my hair.”
"Walking On Thin Ice" on Season of Glass (1981).
Context: I gave you my life, you gave me my life.
Like a gush of wind in my hair.
Why do we forget what's been said
And play the game of life with our hearts?
"Silver Horse" on Season of Glass (1981).
Context: I usually stay away from being carried away,
But one day I saw a silver horse.
I thought he might take me to that somewhere high,
I thought he might take me to that deep blue sky. I came to realize that the horse had no wings.
No wings, well, it wasn't so bad, you know. I learnt to travel the world around
And run on the ground in the morning.
And that's the story of a wandering soul,
A story of a dreamer.
25 Things Even My Best Friends Didn’t Know Until Now (1 October 2009).
Context: In a day, sometimes I feel so much love for the world, I think my heart is bursting. Sometimes, I feel so scared, I want to shrink myself even further. I think that’s what happened to us gods and goddesses. Like the dinosaurs, we realized that it’s too dangerous to be so large. So we kept shrinking ourselves to what we are now. We might get even smaller. I see the sign in the engineers making smaller gadgets, smaller and smaller. Pretty soon, our fingers will be too large to operate them. So what are we doing? I trust in the human wisdom. We are incredibly intelligent beings. So we might know something without thinking that we know…. Well, even my best friend didn’t know until now that I was thinking of crazy things like this.
Quoted from: Yoko Ono - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Guru to Beatles and Beach Boys died in The Netherlands, RollingStone magazine, 6 Mars 2008. 1047, 16, n°1047 http://www.bienfaits-meditation.com/en/the_beatles_and_tm/john_lennon/john_and_yoko_2008
Context: If Lennon were alive today, he probably would have reconciled with the man he accused of having "made a fool of everyone." John would have been the first one now, if he had been there, to recognise and acknowledge what Maharishi has done for the world and appreciate it.
“Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world.”
9 October 2009.
Twitter messages
Context: Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world.
Power works in mysterious ways. You don’t have to do much. Visualise the domino effect And just start thinking PEACE.
The message will circulate faster than you think. It’s Time For Action. The Action is PEACE. Spread the word. Spread PEACE. I love you!
As quoted in "Scores of musicians urge Russia to release Pussy Riot" at Amnesty International (22 July 2013) http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/scores-musicians-urge-russia-release-pussy-riot-2013-07-22
“Never say goodbye,
You say tomorrow's another day,
All I know is we're here today.”
"Never Say Goodbye" on It's Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982).
Context: Never say goodbye,
You say tomorrow's another day,
All I know is we're here today. I've got nightmares I could never share with you,
The kind that keeps me up all night.
So hold me tight till the room is light
And tell me that it's all right.
Game Is Not Over - 2005 Oxford Union Address http://www.jeclique.com/onoweb/news-oxfordjune2005.html
25 Things Even My Best Friends Didn’t Know Until Now (1 October 2009).
Context: In a day, sometimes I feel so much love for the world, I think my heart is bursting. Sometimes, I feel so scared, I want to shrink myself even further. I think that’s what happened to us gods and goddesses. Like the dinosaurs, we realized that it’s too dangerous to be so large. So we kept shrinking ourselves to what we are now. We might get even smaller. I see the sign in the engineers making smaller gadgets, smaller and smaller. Pretty soon, our fingers will be too large to operate them. So what are we doing? I trust in the human wisdom. We are incredibly intelligent beings. So we might know something without thinking that we know…. Well, even my best friend didn’t know until now that I was thinking of crazy things like this.
“Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price.
I'm throwing the dice in the air.”
"Walking On Thin Ice" on Season of Glass (1981) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1DHm7p1sm4
Context: Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price.
I'm throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?
“I usually stay away from being carried away,
But one day I saw a silver horse.”
"Silver Horse" on Season of Glass (1981).
Context: I usually stay away from being carried away,
But one day I saw a silver horse.
I thought he might take me to that somewhere high,
I thought he might take me to that deep blue sky. I came to realize that the horse had no wings.
No wings, well, it wasn't so bad, you know. I learnt to travel the world around
And run on the ground in the morning.
And that's the story of a wandering soul,
A story of a dreamer.
“Mirror becomes a razor when it's broken. A stick becomes a flute when it's loved.”
Source: Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings
“Hide until everybody goes home. Hide until everybody forgets about you. Hide until everybody dies.”
Source: Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings
“I dedicate this light tower to John Lennon
my love for you is forever
yoko ono
October 9th 2007”
Dedication on the Imagine Peace Tower base (2007).
25 Things Even My Best Friends Didn’t Know Until Now (1 October 2009) http://imaginepeace.com/news/archives/5865
9 October 2009.
Twitter messages
29 August 2009.
Twitter messages
“Think that all women are witches, in the sense that a witch is a magical being.”
Source: https://minimalistquotes.com/yoko-ono-quote-23341/
"Never Say Goodbye" on It's Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982).
