The sound of her name is just like these wooden wind chimes my mom keeps on our back porch. The wind comes in off the beach and bumps them around, soft wood clunking out poetry. Sound medicine. An incantation.

Good word. Incantation. Almost as good as Yoko.

Yoko fronts her own rock band even though she’s a senior citizen, and she sees the truth of the world and writes about it and draws about it, too, and one time I got to see her art for real, and it made me cry, it was so good. Most people only know about Yoko because she was married to John Lennon. You know, the Beatle. He’s the imagine all the people guy. I’m a George girl, ’cause he’s the silent, sexy one who’s all enlightened and plays the sitar, but even I have to admit that John is the man.

People say Yoko broke up the Beatles, but that’s just dumb humans blaming a girl for boy problems. The thing is, people change. You know? You love someone, you make things with them, and then you realize you don’t fit anymore. And that’s what happened for John and Paul. They understood that it wasn’t working. No matter how good it was. Before.

In her book Acorn, Yoko has all these suggestions that she writes down for people to do. Like in “Connection Piece I”:

Whisper your name to a pebble.

Sometimes late at night I sneak out of the house and walk over to the beach. I go past the boardwalk, past those iconic Cali lifeguard huts, and the homeless guys and stoners, right down to where the water kisses the shore. I pick up a pebble and I whisper my name to it. Then I throw it into the ocean.

Maybe it will tell the crabs or jellyfish or dolphins my name when they come by.

Maybe someday the whole ocean will be whispering

Hannah. Hannah. Haaaaaa … naaaaaahhhhhhh.