This Week in Joyful Practice: Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, and a Reservoir of Joy
finding ways to dream together
For the past week, I’ve been thinking about what it means to build a reservoir of joy, something we can draw from to get us through the hardest parts of being a human.*
[*Every time I think reservoir of joy, I hear it sung in Lou Reed’s voice to the tune of ‘Satellite of Love’.]
There are endless ways to fill our reservoirs: tiny moments of connection with strangers (human or other), getting lost investigating the things that stir our curiosity, taking chances with one another through playfulness and vulnerability, observing the natural world outside the rectangle of our bedroom window. Each time I belly laugh with a friend, I am filling my reservoir of joy. Every long bath I take while listening to Chani Nicols lay out the week in astrology is a reservoir filler. So are hugs and shared tears and mid-day naps when I should be doing something “productive.”
Last Saturday, I went with one of my Triceratops Sarahs to the Hand’s Off protest here in Oly, and at first, we were feeling pretty cynical. What are we supposed to be doing? Marching? Chanting? Visiting Booths? What’s the organizing principle for this thing? But as we walked further into the crowds and soaked in the signs people carried, my feeling of what’s the point was replaced with glee–so many signs representing so many people: billionaires are the parasite class! and if not coup, why coup-shaped? and eat the rich, feed the hungry. It was the coming together that mattered. Over 5,000 of us gathered together on the state capitol grounds (and so many more across the country), reminding each other, and all the cars honking in support as they drove up Capitol Way, that shit is fucked and we are not alone in our resistance. The reservoir of joy that we’re gonna need to get through what is to come must be deep and wide. Massive events like the one held Saturday can help to keep it filled.
More joy for the reservoir: Yoko Ono
Yesterday, while procrastinating grading, I opened a New York Times article, Is the Yokossance Finally Here? A Yoko Ono renaissance? Yes, please. Yoko Ono is such a delicious mish-mash of contradictions, which makes me feel connected to her, like I can understand some part of the loss she’s known, the grief she holds (true, her art can be hard to understand, but non-understandable is my favorite kind of art). Like Ono, all of us are complicated balls of tangled yarn rolling into one another and trying to figure out how to untie that original, primally wounded knot. Imagine seventy years of free-diving into the creative depths (that’s right–Yoko Ono has been making art for over 70 years!). There is so much to learn from her. The conceptual ideas that unfold when she taps into her sixth sense of What if push me to hone my own What if sensibilities.
The Yoko Ono rabbit hole I went down yesterday afternoon did not help me complete any grading, but it did inspire me creatively, and I discovered (and tried in vain to order a copy of) Lisa Carver’s book Reaching Out With No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono (if any one has a lead on where to get my hands on this book, let me know!) This paragraph by Carver (from a different NYT article) nails why Yoko Ono excites me creatively and why I think her form of conceptual art is one of the many types of art-making that is necessary for the quicksand of reality we are all living though:
The other way to make art [Ono’s method] is to tear down what’s between us and nature, us and eternity, us and the realization that everything is already perfect. In this experience of art, the viewer or listener loses respect for the current order or arrangement of civilization and thus becomes powerful, like King Kong, and outside civilization, like God — or simply like the shuffling janitor who is pleased with his own work and sleeps well*
[*Carver’s reference to a ‘janitor who is pleased with his own work’ reminds me of the Wim Wenders’ movie Perfect Days, which also features another song from Lou Reed’s album Transformer, ‘Perfect Day’. One of my favorite memories of this song is the day my best friend and I listened to it on repeat for two hours straight while playing backgammon. When Yme picked me up, he discovered the two of us singing loudly (off-key, I'm certain) and performing a ‘Perfect Day’ interpretive dance. I’m not sure he appreciated our particular form of genius.]
This is my favorite piece from Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit, which is like an instructional document for art-making and life-living:
BOX PIECE
Buy many dream boxes.
Ask your wife to select one.
Dream together.
y.o. 1964 spring
I love imagining a table full of boxes, and each box holds a dream. I love imagining presenting someone I love with these boxes and saying to them, choose a dream for us to share.
Reservoir of joy is a synonym, perhaps, for dream box. Something we fill so we can access connection to others when we need it, a tool for building something bigger than what we could build alone.
I listened to Yoko Ono last night while making dinner. It wasn’t for two hours, but I did play on repeat Yes, I'm A Witch (from her 2007 album by the same name). It felt good to sing out loud. My voice is real; my voice is truth. I don't fit in your ways.
I need to write these lyrics on a sticky note and put them on the bathroom mirror in between last week’s Joyful Practice Reminder, Go Be Silly With Your Friends, and the button with a photo of a very young Yoko Ono:
Each time we don't say what we wanna say, we're dying
Each time we don't say how do we feel, we're dying
Each time we gotta do what we wanna do, we're living
Each time we open our minds to what we see, we're living
I want to encounter these words in the morning when I’m still half-asleep, let them set the tone for the day before my brain gets taken over by the demands of waking life. I want to speak these words at night before I go to bed, so they inhabit my dreams.
Don't try to make cock-pecked people out of us—I’m thinking I might steal this line from the song and turn it into a sign for the next protest. On the backside of the sign, I’ll write in huge bubble letters, Yes, I’m a witch!
Comments are open below.
We wanna hear about the things that brought you joy this week! Share pictures!! Post poetry!!
What filled your reservoir of joy? What do you imagine your dream box looks like, and what’s inside of it right now?
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