Before you met John, you were already a well-known avant-garde artist. For the last 40 years, you've lived in the public eye to a certain extent.
I say I'm still living, please.
How does that affect your relationship to art? Your life is not what it was when you first started.
I don't feel that way. I'm just me. I was always just me. I was starved during the Second World War and evacuated as a child to some country house. Well, I was still me. When I was living in a rather extravagant environment when I was a little girl -- that was still me. In other words, the environment doesn't really -- it does affect me in a way. All different environments were educational, let's put it that way. But it didn't change me.
Your fame afforded you a large platform for your views. Do you think you would have been as compelled to engage in politics or social issues if you felt your platform wasn't --
I was always engaged in politics. Please. When I was sitting in a bag or something and saying I was doing that for world peace in Trafalgar Square, I was not that famous. Well, I was a famous avant-garde artist, but it wasn't really translated into world fame. I was known in London, and the journalists would come and say, "Is that Yoko?" because I'm in a bag or something standing in Trafalgar Square, and I would say, "Yes, yes, it's me." That was the extent of it. I was always political. But we are all political. We have to be because all of us are social animals. Of course we are political, just by not being political even. So I was political, yes.
So you don't feel you would have been a different type of artist if you had not been so famous?
To the extent of, let's say that I was an avant-garde artist when I was in London or something and made the "Bottoms" film [Ono's 1966 experimental film that consisted of close-ups of people's butts as they walked on a treadmill], and when I made the "Bottoms" film, all my avant-garde friends were up in arms saying "She sold out."
You weren't indie enough.
No, no, I wasn't indie enough. Suddenly I wasn't invited to dinner parties by avant-garde artists.
Which is probably not a bad thing.
Well, I don't know. I felt very lonely because nobody was inviting me. And then John picked me up, so that's OK. It was really like that. Every turn of my life. It's literally like that. When I was a little girl I was in -- where was I? -- Long Island [where, as a child, Yoko lived from 1940 to 1941 before returning to Japan] or something like that, and the block that I was living in, it was OK. Everybody loved me and we all loved each other and there was kindness there. But two blocks away from that district and -- surprise, surprise -- kids were stoning me. Actually hurling stones at me. And the reason is because it was second anti-Asian time. All the films were showing and any enemy or any baddie was Asian. And then I went back to Japan and they were stoning me conceptually as someone who came back from a foreign land and my body movements or something were a little foreign. Then I was evacuated to the country [in 1945, after Tokyo had been fire-bombed] and the country kids stoned me because I was a city kid -- actually throwing stones at me. The thing is, it's a very strange life, but each time I was just me.
Just recently there was some negative stuff about your personal life that came to light. [Ono's chauffeur was arrested for allegedly trying to blackmail her with private conversations he had recorded.]
Don't say "came to light." The point is that there wasn't anything I was hiding. It was somebody making something up.
That's the wrong choice of words, but that occurred. Then today I was walking by a comic book store and they had 30 John Lennon dolls in the window.
Oh my God. I didn't know that there were dolls like that.
Do you ever normalize that level of public interest in your life?
Normalize that? I'm just being normal. A normal woman. Well, I don't know what a normal woman is, but I'm a woman and I'm Yoko and I've never changed that. It's not like I was insisting on being this one. But it feels like I'm trying to sort of expand my views and try to do something that's new and that's totally out of Yoko Ono, that's distant from what Yoko is. But then in hindsight that's very Yoko. I can't escape from myself it seems. And that's OK. I don't know what is normal. Do you know what is normal? You just grab one person out on the street and start asking what kind of life this person has, you'll be surprised that each one is very, very strange, you know what I mean?
What are your future plans?
Do you know what your future plan is? I don't have any goals. The fact is that maybe that was my strength -- I'm always living in "now" and hopefully don't get too bothered by the past. I don't think about what's going to happen in the future. The future for me is an open book. That's how I was always. I don't have a goal. I don't limit myself to a goal.
About the writer
David Marchese is associate music editor at Salon.
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