The great Artists’ Books and Multiples recently did a riff on bottles and jars created by members of 60s/70s avant-garde art movement Fluxus’. Our favorites are these two by Yoko Ono. Bottles of Night Air. Lovely.

They remind us of the jar of air we brought back from Ireland, to capture and remember that exact time and place…and air. (The Fluxus people loved conceptual art jars of captured ideas, memories and feelings).

At first we thought it would be nice to find a poem to go with Yoko’s bottles. Then we thought: They ARE poems! We can feel the night air..

But we did wonder if Yoko had written anything about air. We found “Air Talk” from the 70’s

 

Air Talk

One, two, three, four, five, six

It’s sad that air is the only thing we share
No matter how close we are there’s always air between us
It’s also nice that air’s something we all share
No matter how far apart we are an air links us

It’s sad that past is something we can never share
No matter how close we are the past is between us
But it’s also nice that without the past
We’d have never known each other
No matter how far apart we are it brought us together

Yes, it’s very nice to have someone to share
There’s something very nice to have someone to care
We may not share our past but we have our future to share

It’s sad that life is such a heavy thing to bear
No matter how close we are it’s easy to despair
It’s also nice that you and I know it’s what we all share
No matter how far apart we are we can learn to care

There’s something very nice to have something to share
There’s something very nice to have someone to care
We may not share our bodies but we have our minds to share

Yes, there’s something very nice to have something to care
There’s something very nice to have someone to share
We may not share our language but we have the world to share