ON THIS DAY...

     One never knows when one will skirt close to history. Life is weird and seems to be unfolding on many different levels simultaneously. Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. December 7th was also my girlfriend in 1980, Kai's, birthday. Because Kai, a woman of Asian descent, dispelled all the  stereotypes of the passive Asian woman I never forgot that her birthday fell on December 7th. Forget her birthday and suffer the consequences. She made the attack on Pearl Harbor look like a cakewalk. In 1980 we lived in Berkeley, Ca. and were visiting NYC in order for me to try to crack into the art world with my blood prints and cow. After a week of gallery hopping and museum going I had one more task. I wanted to track down Yoko Ono and try to sell her my cow as a conceptual art work.

   John Lennon and Yoko seemed to be everywhere in New York in 1980. They were getting plenty of press, living at The Dakota and I had read that Yoko was invested in a dairy farm somewhere in upstate New York. I thought that if I could find her (and The Dakota) I could pitch her on the idea of buying MY COW and let it live out its natural life on her farm. The problem was that after living in California for five years I was completely ignorant of New York City. I had no idea where The Dakota was or how exactly to find Yoko. As the departure time for our flight loomed I scrapped my plan to find and stake out The Dakota and we caught a car service to the airport. The pilot announced that John Lennon had been murdered somewhere over the Rockies.

Nine years later:

    I was guest teaching at The San Francisco Art Institute. One day after class Mark McCloud came by and drug me to a ritzy party on Nob Hill. There was Fee Waybill (of The Tubes) on the piano, Todd Rundgren was nursing a drink on the couch and who was in front of me waiting for the bathroom? Yoko Ono. I said hi, introduced myself and began to tell her the story of MY COW. It had been hit by a truck a few months after John had been killed. I was about to tell her about my plan to stalk her at her home on the day her husband was killed.....and thought better. Instead, I gave her a cassette recording of my band Purple Geeezus. She was gracious and I wouldn't meet her again until five years later....at The Dakota.

 In 1994, broke, sick of working doorman jobs in the East Village, I got a job as a restoration carpenter with Strasser and Assocs. We had many clients at The Dakota. So, one day in early December, during deer season, I was rushing to finish a job for Joe Namath so I could leave and join my father deer hunting in Cooperstown. To that end, I took one of the many Dakota elevators that was verboten to carpenters.  Who was on the elevator? Yoko. My mind raced. Did I remind her that we had met? Did I bring up MY COW again? Context is everything. My hair was now long and I had a big greying beard. I did not look like the same person I was five years prior. I stared at the ceiling, clutching my tools, hoping she wouldn't notice that I was a worker. No such luck. She called the management and I got reamed out for taking the private elevator. I never met Yoko again. The next day I shot my first deer in the middle of Lake Otsego. But that's another story. John Lennon was murdered forty-one years ago today.