My Guitar Gently Weeps

"I was in a highly unshaved and tatty state," John Lennon said of his 1966 meeting with a certain conceptual artist, then mounting her first show at London's Indica Gallery. "I was up three nights. I was always up in those days, tripping. I was stoned."

But not so stoned as to be impressed. "Fuck," Lennon thought. "I can make that. I can put an apple on a stand. I want more." Only as he was getting ready to leave the exhibit did something interesting happen: "I saw this ladder...leading up to the ceiling," Lennon remembered.

There was a spyglass hanging down. It's what made me stay. I went up the ladder and I got the spyglass and there was tiny little writing there. You really have to stand on the top of the ladder--you feel like a fool, you could fall any minute--and you look through and it just says "yes."

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.