Gumption: America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

by Nick Offerman

  In the year 1610, Virginia adopted Great Britain’s “sodomy” laws, which basically made the act of copulation between men punishable by death. In 1777 Thomas Jefferson raised eyebrows when he proposed that the penalty for sodomy be reduced from death to castration. (I can almost hear the haters demeaning Jefferson: “. . . classic Hollywood liberal.”) Of course this proposal was deemed as too lenient and so was never enacted.

  America’s armed forces have also been a hotbed of discrimination and controversy throughout our history. Initially, soldiers could be discharged only if witnessed in flagrante delicto, mano a mano, but after World War II, simply admitting to homosexuality became grounds enough for dismissal. The army began asking soldiers for their sexual orientation, yet another shameful example of the government sticking its nose where it didn’t belong. In ’53, Eisenhower, the president of the United States, banned gays from employment in the federal government! By executive order! And this wasn’t repealed until 1975! Oh, hello, we have arrived at Barney Frank.

  Now we have a little clearer idea of the guts Mr. Frank exhibited in taking up this cause for equality, even years before he himself came out. Despite the very real prejudice that existed then, and is still prevalent (although thankfully somewhat diminished) today, he didn’t bat an eyelash in his pursuit of legislation that will serve us all in our continuing quest for decency. Simply, he has put up with a lot of shit in thirty-two years in the House, and he has risen above it.

  Look, this job certainly didn’t make any sense in terms of maximizing my income or minimizing my stress or maximizing the comfort of my life. I think it’s a wonderful job to have, because I’m able to work to make fundamental changes in society and improve the quality of people’s lives and eliminate and diminish unfairness at various times. If I wasn’t able to do what I thought was important public policy, it would be a stupid job to have.

  Mr. Frank and Mr. Berry and I all seem to agree that we humans are complicated and messy animals in many ways. It’s our nature. Despite that nature, in order to fulfill our Founding Fathers’ vision of a nation where no persons suffer unfair prejudice, we must find ourselves an uncomfortable place in the middle of issues. If we all can consider gay people, including lesbian and transgender folks, simply “folks,” only then can we move forward with addressing all the actual tasks we have in front of us. More hugs, less punches.

  11

  YOKO ONO

  Oh, Yoko.

  If any of you hear her name and think, “Oh, you mean the no-good so-and-so who broke up the Beatles?,” well, let’s get that cleared up right off the bat. There happen to be some incredibly satisfying accounts of the Beatles’ history in book form (my favorite recently was The Beatles: The Biography, by Bob Spitz) that should serve to satisfyingly untangle any misapprehensions we fans might have been under in regard to the forces that actually did bring about the end of the greatest rock band in history. But before that information was available to me (or rather, I to it), as a rather simple rube pretty fresh off the sweet-corn truck from Illinois, I was certainly subscribing to that particular inaccuracy about Yoko. My beautiful bride set me straight, yet another reason they call me “the Lucky Bastard.”

  In 2002 Megan announced to me that we would be attending an art opening at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, California, and that the opening was for Yoko Ono. I squinted slightly and blinked a couple of times as I determined that, no, this was not some sort of uproarious ruse. “What kind of art?” I believe I asked. “You don’t like her, do you? You know . . . the Beatles?”

  Then it was Megan’s turn to gauge my sincerity. She blinked thrice while inhaling, then sighed and, evincing forcible restraint, set down her spatula. She quietly said, “Her art is amazing.” Then added, with defeat, “You don’t know about her art?”

  I hadn’t known one bit. Considering all the ways in which I am still profoundly ignorant today after reading a hell of a lot of books, you can only imagine the breadth of my innocence thirteen years ago. Megan has been the most tolerant of teachers, understanding inherently that, in my case, the fruits of the tree of knowledge must be plucked, chewed, and digested but one at a time, if she wants me to keep them down. Fortunately, that night was the perfect time for some fruit.

  We went to the opening early, because if you’re famous, like Megan had become after four seasons of Will & Grace at that point, you can get into the gallery before the public for a preview, which also means you can get dibs on purchasing pieces of art, should you be so inclined, before they get scooped up. Megan is a keen art collector, so she was known to the gallerist, who in turn mentioned her to Yoko.

  Well, it turns out that Yoko was a very big fan of Will & Grace, and so when we arrived at the preview, she was there to greet us with her son, Sean. If I was incredibly excited to meet Yoko and Sean Ono Lennon, an amazing musician in his own right (and a right sweetheart), then Megan was on the roof. Hell, she was over the moon. We all made pals, and Megan and I toured the collection, which included some Cloud Pieces, as well as a series of photographs of a window in her apartment at the Dakota building on Central Park.

  But this was far from Yoko’s first gallery showing, by forty or more years’ distance. What Megan had explained to me before we arrived was that Yoko Ono had already been an iconoclastic and groundbreaking conceptual artist when she and John Lennon met in 1966. She had mounted a show in a swell-sounding pad called the Indica Gallery in London, to which John arrived (for a preview, natch), on the invitation of the gallery director, John Dunbar. Apparently, Yoko was not a fan of popular music, as she had not heard of John Lennon, but Dunbar explained that he was a rich chap who might like her work and hence buy something.

  As he toured the work, Lennon noticed an apple for sale for two hundred pounds. “I thought it was fantastic,” he said. “I got the humor in her work immediately. . . . There was a fresh apple on a stand—and it was two hundred quid to watch the apple decompose.” First of all, two hundred quid in 1966 pounds was equal to about three thousand pounds in today’s purse.

  Second, the idea of reducing the artist’s participation in the experience to the mere curating of a scenario in which the patron was paying to watch nature work one of her many miracles—in this case, rot—was indeed hilarious, but also visionary. It recalls Michael Pollan’s description to me of the Chez Panisse dessert of pear and fig that could not be improved upon (see chapter 12), but in the case of Yoko’s apple, one was meant to “enjoy” the fruit with eyes and nose and, of course, imagination and humor.

  Now, this was getting good. The more I heard about this early brand of Yoko’s mischief, the more I liked it. In the early sixties, according to Alexandra Munroe of the Guggenheim, “[Yoko] was the first artist, in 1964, to put language on the wall of the gallery and invite the viewer to complete the work. She was the first to cede authorial authority in this way, making her work interactive and experimental.” (I’m a tad puzzled by Ms. Munroe’s authorial redundancy, but as an aspiring student, I will let it stand, in the name of accuracy, however much it may make my cheeks blush a reddish red.)

  Another piece from 1964 that is considered by some her most courageous work was called Cut Piece. In a more theatrical setting, it was wholly interactive; almost more performance art than a conceptual piece, in which Yoko sat, silent and unmoving, while the audience was invited to approach her and snip away at her clothing with a sizable pair of scissors. Again, for the early sixties, this was shocking material to comprehend. There’s a filmed piece of it on YouTube. If you examine it, try to imagine the vulnerability and submissiveness of this tiny, young, beautiful Asian woman, allowing herself to be so subjugated in front of an audience. One young white man in particular becomes rather rapacious with his cutting, as though to say, “Well, I’ll show you how this is done.” The way that makes me feel: That is the artistry of the piece. Yoko has long been a master of using her skills in disparate media to leave her magic roil
ing, not on the wall or the stereo, but within the brain and heart of the receiver.

  Megan and I recently saw the excellent documentary Marina Abramovic´: The Artist Is Present (highly recommended), in which Ms. Abramovic´ is described as “the grandmother of performance art.” Megan exclaimed, and said, “Make sure you put it in your chapter that Yoko was doing Cut Piece a decade before Marina even started!” Perhaps, then, Yoko could be considered the great-grandmother of the medium.

  The omission seemed too obvious to be accidental, but perhaps it occurred partially due to the world’s inability to put a label on the many varied disciplines of Yoko’s art. While Abramovic´ is specifically a “performance artist,” Yoko Ono defies any one moniker. According to the Guggenheim’s Munroe, “What makes her so slippery is that she is so wide-ranging. She is a musician and a poet, a peace activist and a performance artist, a maker of objects and a conceptual artist—and married to John Lennon.”

  Speaking of John, let’s get back to their first meeting. There was one more item in that Indica Gallery show, the description of which incited me to immediate Yoko discipleship, and it happens to have been the artwork that hooked John Lennon as well, so let’s let him describe it: “There was another piece that really decided me for-or-against the artist: a ladder which led to a painting which hung on the ceiling. It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says ‘Yes.’ So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘No’ or ‘Fuck you’ or something. It said ‘Yes.’”

  When I heard about that historic moment from 1966 London thirty-seven years later? Christ, I fell in love with her. To me, this anecdote sums up what I most admire about Yoko: her positivity. The spirit of everything she has created, and continues to create, is swaddled in an unmitigated message of, quite simply, love. In the name of love, she perpetually challenges us to reexamine the dogmatic thinking of our time, to expand our emotional capabilities beyond the mediocre level of decency to which we’ve acquiesced.

  Quite possibly the greatest artistic couple in the past century had met and begun to recognize the magic between them. John would never be the same, certainly, but in fairness, how could we ever blame Yoko for John’s subsequent maturation? When anybody falls under the sway of true love, what use can there be in blaming the beloved? If you’re an ardent fan of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, then the supposition that Yoko could have caused the Beatles’ breakup, even indirectly, doesn’t actually make much sense. Particularly in the case of John, who was nothing if not an intensely discriminating individualist. That one of his life choices was to be with Yoko at that point was certain, but their relationship’s blossoming had considerably less to do with the Beatles’ disbanding than John’s own relationship with his mates.

  John said, “That was it. The old gang of mine was over the moment I met her. I didn’t consciously know it at the time, but that’s what was going on. . . . That was the end of the boys, but it so happened that the boys were well-known and weren’t just the local guys at the bar.” To accuse him of the pithless character that would have been required to in any way let “Yoko break up the band,” as though he had no free will to divorce himself from them of his own accord, is seriously demeaning to the man we reportedly admire so. Those of us who have chosen domesticity (a wise choice) have all been there. You sacrifice the pub, as it were, for the household.

  The most explanatory but seldom mentioned fact is that the Beatles were simply done. They had created a gorgeous collection of music together, a prolific body of work that altered the landscape of music and, arguably, Western culture, more expansively than anything since the printing press. The creative flame of the collective had burned terrifically bright and then, having consumed its fuel, gone dark. How can we complain at the duration of the candle’s life when what remained was the best bunch of records ever cut by four cute white boys?

  As significant as the Beatles were, it turned out that John had even bigger fish to fry. With all their work as “passive activists,” John and Yoko cleverly began using their fame as just another medium in which to practice creativity. Their campaign “War Is Over! If You Want It” was born of their antiviolent contribution to the national protests against the Vietnam War. Aware that their wedding would bring with it a tsunami of press attention, the couple took the opportunity to shift the focus to their experimental protest efforts in the name of peace.

  In 1969, as the conflict raged in Vietnam, Yoko and John staged two “bed-ins” from their hotel rooms in Amsterdam and Montreal. The “bed-in” (a humorous take on the more traditional sit-in, in which protestors camp out at a location until they are either arrested or evicted, or, conversely, their demands are met) simply involved the press entering the couple’s hotel room, where they conducted all-day press conferences on exploring new methods of cultivating world peace. John later said of these, “It’s part of our policy not to be taken seriously. Our opposition, whoever they may be, in all manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humour. And we are humorous.”

  I can’t help but cite the similarity to these lines from Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”:

  As soon as the generals and the politicos

  can predict the motions of your mind,

  lose it. Leave it as a sign

  to mark the false trail, the way

  you didn’t go. Be like the fox

  who makes more tracks than necessary,

  some in the wrong direction.

  Yoko and John’s ideas were indeed simultaneously funny and inspiring. They introduced a new methodology called “Bagism,” which entailed a person covering his or her entire body in a cloth bag, so that they would be perceived by others without regard to appearance, race, sexuality, hair length, age, habiliments, etcetera. The use of the bag would free the public from the influence of stereotyping and its resultant prejudices. Pretty hilarious but also true.

  Another gesture from this period in 1969 that I find very touching was when Yoko and John sent a gift of acorns to the heads of state from fifty countries, asking them to plant the acorns as a symbol of peace. The couple had such an excellent attitude about addressing the political entities that engaged our nations in “warfare” then, as does Yoko still to this day, although I have to put “warfare” in quotes, since we have relegated the inaugural American foreign policy of “justified fair fighting” to the distant past. (Now we are fed the softening line that we’re engaged in “policing actions,” as though that makes the victims on both sides any less dead.)

  In a substantial way, John and Yoko were the forerunners of today’s best source for open-minded news: the comedy news program. Let’s face it—the state of our nation’s decency is an absolutely shameful mess. It’s become perfectly clear that our democracy is being run, not by the people it supposedly represents, but by the corporations who control the vast majority of those people, as well as the vast majority of the nation’s wealth.

  Meanwhile, as we discussed in chapter 10, those of us who don’t necessarily agree with the McDonald’s ads telling us that they “love to see us smile” have come to depend upon the comedy of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, and others of their redoubtable ilk, to deliver our “news”; polarized medicine prescribed with a spoonful of ribald sugar, in a fashion that is approximately 87 percent more truthful than that of the straight news channels. As John Lennon (and Yoko) deduced, “Now I understand what you have to do: Put your political message across with a little honey.”

  The billionaire Koch brothers recently announced their projection to spend 889 million dollars on the campaigns of their candidates for the 2016 presidential elections. Has it come to this? The corporate interests are now so cavalier that they can publicly, preemptively anno
unce the magnitude of their influence on our supposedly “democratic elections”? Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, suggested that we should just give up the ruse and elect the money itself as president. As hilarious as that joke is, it’s even sadder in the amount of truth it contains.

  John and Yoko set an admirable precedent in the humor they brought to the proceedings surrounding the public treatment of the Vietnam “conflict.” Their “War Is Over! If You Want It” serves as a constant reminder to us that we don’t have to be a part of this nefarious system. To this day, you can visit the movement’s website and print up posters and download computer wallpapers of the slogan in more than a hundred languages. Yoko has also recently given her blessing to a feminist movement that has appropriated the phrase for a campaign to further support women’s reproductive rights in particular called the “War on Women Is Over! If You Want It.”

  So, given my appreciation for her art and her message, I became absolutely hooked on Yoko. A most beautiful spirit, she won me over with the empathetic envelope pushing she has practiced as a vocation for the past fifty-five or sixty years. Megan and I had such a lovely time meeting her and Sean, and we have been most gratified when our lives have brought us back into her orbit, which eventually, as fate would have it, brought us to the threshold of the Dakota.

  Also known as the apartment building in which Rosemary’s Baby is set, the Dakota is where John and Yoko lived together when he was tragically gunned down by Mark David Chapman on the night of December 8, 1980. Rereading the events of that night has been emotionally harrowing, but one fact stood out to lighten the burden: Several witnesses at Roosevelt Hospital, where Lennon had been rushed after the shooting, reported that at the moment Lennon’s death was pronounced, the Beatles’ “All My Loving” coincidentally came floating over the hospital’s sound system: a small flower blooming in the carnage of the battlefield.