Music of the Mind Yoko Ono

 Yoko Ono ‘Music of the Mind’ 2024

This book accompanied the exhibition at Tate Modern.  Feb to Sept 2024,

‘Music of the Mind’ has contributions by various writers who give their own takes on Yoko Ono’s art and it includes pieces she wrote  and some of her lyrics. There are photographs, many including Yoko as a young artist, and the emphasis is on telling her early life and her most famous works from the sixties and seventies.
Her pages of the words ‘Peace is Power’ in various languages printed on turquoise blue paper form one section.

I attended an extensive exhibition by Yoko Ono  at The Baltic in 2008 which included much of the same work but I could not find it mentioned in this book.

I have also read about her life before but there are new pieces of information here such as her early interest in drama at school , that she was treated in a mental hospital in Japan for a month 1962, and that she and John Lennon performed with jazz musicians in Cambridge 1969.

There is some emphasis on her feminist views with thought provoking quotations such as,
‘If you keep hammering anti-abortion
We’ll tell you no more masturbation for men
Every day you’re killing living sperms , in billions
So how do you feel about that, brother.’

I would have liked more about  her more recent work, which has continued and goes on into her nineties.

What a phenomena she is. She seems to have been able to join the art scene in New York with ease, coming from a wealthy Japanese background but wanting to be anti establishment and fitting in with the exciting times, experimenting with sound and ideas and then being brave in exploiting her increased fame when working with John Lennon.
She found music a great help in coping with grief after her beloved John was murdered and she has kept going with various projects, always trying to involve the audience and take a positive attitude directed to the cause of peace and personal awareness.

If you like Yoko Ono or are intrigued by her you will enjoy this new book.

 

 

The Horned Whale by Jeremy Schanche

The Horned Whale by Jeremy Schanche

The Horned Whale is a collection of two stories, a novel, some poems and a ‘Dream Manifesto’
There are even three drawings.

I began with the poems which being shorter are easier to digest.
I liked the manifesto with its echo of the American constitution.

My favourite was the ‘Ghost-Hulk of a Phantom’ which swept me willingly along a flood of allteration, lists, fantasy, made up and foreign words, rhythmic repetition and  humorous surprises in a pleasurable ride to its hero-rescuing climax which made me laugh out loud in a delighted way.

The other two parts are similarly fanciful. The Kramvil has more plot but even then that  could be summarised in a few sentences- it’s the whirling deluge of language that is striking. Occasionally certain words I found over used such as ‘pullulating’.
Again the hero encounters physical dangers and falls for a beautiful woman with whom he exits the tale in a rosy tinted halo of glory.
There’s not much character development or emotional enquiry.
It’s not the sort of writing I usually go for but it’s remarkable, unusual and flows under its own head of romantic steam.

Jeremy Schanche lives in Penzance and as well as writing is a versatile musician.


 

President Chimp by Jeremy Schanche

 President Chimp is a short work presenting the escape from Detroit zoo of a monkey who takes over the Presidency of America.
Jeremy Schanche satirizes the Chimp story colourfully, showing us a creature bearing grudges from his past treatment, wildly unpredictable  and dangerous, ludicrous and grotesque.
’Chimpy hugged the limelight  and worked the crowd with a deftness of touch that made Ziggy Stardust seem a bumbling amateur dramatist in a village panto.’
Along the way the author manages to bring in serious swipes at the death penalty, the Mexican border wall, built with non Union Labour, the English Prime Minister, Bojo, etc.
 England is ‘a tiny island swarming with a bizarre mixture of effete intellectuals  and turnip munching medieval peasants,’
Elton John comes in for criticism and whistling ability is seen as a sign of humanity. I wasn’t so keen on that as I cannot whistle but I have heard the author is accomplished in that art.
Chimp flies into rages,’his face quivered in simian mania, going from pale orange to deepest  darkest blood red, like a tequila sunrise.’
It’s this inventive turn of phrase that carries the narrative flying along to what I found to be a satisfying conclusion.

There are two more sections in the book which contrast dramatically with the first section.
In ‘More of everything’ the author gives us a fable about wanting  to make one’s senses develop and how the hero comes to a profound conclusion. This fable can go off at any tangents, surprising the reader.

The third section, ‘Into the  thunderbolt  land’  takes us to Tibet, the Chinese invasion, and the quest for Buddhist enlightenment.
What a contrast- kindness and transcendence.

Thus the book gives us three levels of existence, from lurid gross materialism, through surreal sensations to acceptance, ending with spiritual enlightenment.
The journey leaves this reader in no doubt which is preferable.



Jeremy Schanche recently also published a compendium of writings called ‘The Horned Whale’