"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."

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