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ing" and the line, "I pushed an empty baby carriage all over the city." That was the first song we recorded for Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band, and I think it's in
Grapefruit,
tooI mean the instruction "Push an empty baby carriage all over the city" [See "City Piece: Walk all over the city with an empty baby carriage" (Winter, 1961) near the end of the first section (Music) of
Grapefruit
]. So I'm pushing the baby carriage and I'm thinking I don't want to
know
about this. That aspect of projection is interesting, isn't it?
MacDonald:
Yes.
Ono:
If you are somebody who makes films with a commercial concern or other concerns, other than just inspiration, maybe that sort of thing wouldn't happen. I don't know. But inspiration is very much connected with your life in the past and future.
MacDonald: Apotheosis
is a gorgeous film. It's one of the collaborations that's listed as John's film, though the idea of stripping things away until you've got a white screen is very much like some of your work.
Ono:
Well, I'll tell you what happened. I think some of the instructions are already there in
Grapefruit,
or maybe not, maybe it's one of the instructions that haven't been published [Ono is referring to the second version of her film script, "Film No. 1 (A Walk to the Taj Mahal)"]. There was a constant feeling of wanting to take an object that's on the groundnot necessarily an object, could be a personin fact the original idea was a drunken guy walking in a snowy field; you don't see the drunken guy, but the camera suggests that he's drunk because of the way it moves. So he walks and sways, and finally the camera goes up in the sky. When we did the cover for the "Two Virgins" album, where we were both naked, one of us said, "Why don't we make a film where the camera moves from the ground up, shooting our naked bodies, and then just goes up in the air." Later, John said, "Well, let's make one where the camera goes up.'' So the idea stemmed from that. What happened, of course, was that we didn't expect the balloon film to be the way it turned out. We went up in the balloon, and it happened to be a snowy day.
MacDonald:
You were in the balloon with the camera?
Ono:
Up to a certain point. The part where you go into the cloud, and then break out of the cloud, was taken later. The footage that came back from the lab was beautiful. It was just something that happened naturally, the dogs barking, everything that happenedit was an incredible experience. We didn't expect it was going to be that beautiful. A lot of things just happen, you know.
MacDonald:
If you allow them to, I guess.
Ono:
Yes!
MacDonald: Fly
seems almost the opposite of
Apotheosis
in a way; it seems . . .