Hype: Yoko Ono's Grapefruit
What is Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit? It is a set of instructions on how to make things that can and can’t be made. And on how to live. Happily. Very funny and very serious, it is a book that helps me forget myself.
500 noses are more beautiful than
one nose. Even a telephone no. is more
beautiful if 200 people think of
the same number at the same time.
-Yoko Ono’s “Let’s Piece I”
These instructions remind us of the importance and beauty of other people and of the earth itself. And they emphasize the beauty of impermanence, as in this bit from “Tape Piece III: Snow Piece:” “Take a tape of the sound of the snow falling…Cut it and use it as strings to tie gifts with.” Some of the instructions can’t literally be carried out (like letting someone else sleep for you while you do all the things you want to do with your life), but this one could be. If you did this, the recipient wouldn’t know that the ribbon is made with a recording of snow falling, and yet the giver knows she’s giving away a compound gift of both a physical object and a sacrificed experience.
Sacrifice and sharing are major themes running throughout these poem instructions. Like “Pea Piece”: “Carry a bag of peas. Leave a pea wherever you go.” Yes, the sharing isn’t always something the recipient will want, as also seen in “Laundry Piece,” where you show your dirty laundry to your guests and explain to them how it became dirty.
Some of these I’d like to actually accomplish. When the butterflies in my stomach die, I would like to send yellow death announcements to my friends.
There’s an irreverence for the sacredness of art here, as when she suggests cutting up famous paintings to make underwear out of them. Maybe it is better to destroy the formality of art and sacrifice some beautiful artworks than to let art be sequestered to museums. Also, she expresses appreciation for the sacredness of things that are not considered beautiful. For example: “Roaches are moving forms of flowers, though visually they seem unconnected.” This is funny, but honestly, I’d like to appreciate roaches more.
She includes some thoughts about art as additional material towards the end of the book:
“If people want to make war, they should make a colour war, and paint each others city up during the night in pinks and greens. Men have an unusual talent for making a bore out of everything they touch. Art, painting, sculpture, like who wants a cast-iron woman, for instance.”
She’s joking here, as usual, and I bet she would let you get away with saying “not all men” in response (and I would let you get away with it, too). But many of her instructions (which she calls instruction paintings) challenge the idea that art has to be serious. It doesn’t have to be formal or fashionable or sacred or rarified. It can be a strange image that makes you laugh. It can be a film of people’s butts (a thing she also made).
Then there are her instructions that ask you to imagine things. These imaginings are so full, they shove out all your sad, neurotic thoughts.
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.
These “imagine” pieces show you the kind of life it’s possible to live inside your mind. She guides you to imagine dividing up a canvas to send to arbitrary addresses, and to imagine a flower made of metal that becomes soft like cotton or flesh. I love guided imaginings, and hers are especially evocative. If you really try to imagine, you can feel the materials in your hands.
The directive to imagine might sound familiar, but these poems were written before she met John Lennon. In fact, they inspired him.
Shortly before his death, Lennon said of Grapefruit and “Imagine”:
“Actually that should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song because a lot of it—the lyric and the concept—came from Yoko. But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho…[b]ut it was right out of Grapefruit, her book. There’s a whole pile of pieces about “Imagine this” and “Imagine that.” … But if it had been Bowie, I would have put “Lennon-Bowie,” you see. If it had been a male, you know…. Harry Nilsson—“Old Dirt Road,” it’s “Lennon-Nilsson.” But when we did [“Imagine”] I just put “Lennon” because, you know, she’s just the wife and you don’t put her name on, right?”
In 1964, she published Grapefruit herself and tried to sell the copies on the streets of Tokyo, giving them away when people didn’t want to pay for them. As artists in a capitalist society (not just economy, but society), we are encouraged to get ahead, to win awards and make something of ourselves. I want to be the kind of artist handing out my dreams on the street instead of worrying about my place. We can all be like that, maybe, but it feels daunting. Maybe this is why we have to imagine it first.
Marrying John Lennon meant Yoko Ono would never be known first as an artist. Because of his fame, more people knew her name and fewer people understood her. She sacrificed something for him. She did it because she loved him, and because she wanted to live a free life on her own terms. This spirit of love and careful carelessness infuses every word of Grapefruit.
For some interesting info on Grapefruit:
https://madelinex.com/2018/07/04/yoko-onos-strange-fruit-grapefruit/