I stand amazed at the energy of this woman. For more than an hour and a half, Yoko shrieked, wailed, moaned, gasped, (and made other noises there are no words for) with a highly charged and wonderful energy which I doubt that I, at age 37, could have sustained for more than 15 minutes. I even wondered how the band, literally three times younger than her, kept up. But keep up they did. And what a show it was.

Coming onstage in black jeans, black tank top and blue silk blouse (the blouse would later go), her magenta streaked hair cropped the shortest I've seen it since she and John cut their hair to benefit Michael X in 1970, Yoko spoke a bit about Boston, clam chowder, her earrings (given to her by her grandmother) and her observation that here in the late 20th century, nobody feels particularly at ease with the state of things, "but tonight" she averred, "we will have a blast." She even apologized for rambling on a bit, but it was a nice, homey touch, and quoting John, she said, "as a very sweet man once said, 'half of what I say is meaningless/but I say it just to reach you'" and with that the band slammed into "Turned the Corner", a song that wonders, as many of us do, how so many years could have flown by as we blinked once.

"I'm Dying" followed, a song that conveys so much with just those two words and the endless array of emotional sounds at Yoko's disposal. Sean then went to the piano and struck the first chord of "Kurushi". There is something strangle comforting in the gorgeously elegiac minor key chords of this painful song which are slightly reminiscent of "Mrs. Lennon", even moreso of John's "Mother." And how appropriate. After more than half a century, Yoko screams for her own mother in this song.

Seamlessly Following "Kurushi" was the spoken "Will I?" with a quite different arrangement than the version on "Rising." Instead of the stark tick tock alarm clock backing there was a beautiful wash of sound, including Sean playing a saw. Yoko the performance artist then began to read from 19th Century encyclopedia which blamed the female uterus for practically every ill of society, including insanity. (This encyclopedia, she good-naturedly pointed out, was published in Boston). As the band launched into a riff-heavy new song, Yoko began tearing pages out of the book and tossing them into the crowd. It was an utterly liberating moment.

I should point out that I was positioned directly behind the two largest and tallest people in the theater, if not the largest people in the entire city. I decided this simply would not do and squeezed myself directly to the front of the stage, passing on the way a ridiculous acting woman with her fingers in her ears, and placing myself next to a man with a sour expression on his face. I thought to myself, "why are these people here?" To them, I quote John: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the pissoir!" Most of the audience, however - 450 people - were wildly enthusiastic. Not Yoko the celebrity, but Yoko the CULT ARTIST was in town!

To the side of the stage, a crush of people, mostly quite young, were dancing and shaking it up. It wasn't a mosh pit, but it could have turned into one and I was halfway hoping it would. What would have been more cool than kids moshing to the 63-year-old "high priestess of avant-garde" as Rolling Stone recently called her? Behind me, someone was waving a copy of the "Fly" album high in the air. Meanwhile, onstage, Sean was doing letter perfect renditions of Yoko's shrieks, to which she joined in. Dueting screams! Is this a cool world or what?

This tangle of sound evolved into "Rising", and not to overuse the word (or overstate the case) I do not think I have ever experienced a more liberating fifteen or so minutes of music. Although I did not intend to do so, I found myself screaming and chanting along with Yoko and Sean, and waving my arm in the air as she did (Bob Dylan's line "to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free" comes to mind). This is certainly what the Primal Scream experience must feel like. At the conclusion, I felt so spiritually cleansed, I was even kindly disposed toward the Ridiculous Woman and the Sour Man. Onstage, the band was taking their bows.

Returning, the first encore was "Mindtrain", the only old song of the evening. People were singing along-dub dub/dub dub/thirty-three windows shining..back in the recesses of 1971 when one was mocked and made fun of for owning - let alone loving - the "Fly" album, it would have been far beyond my wildest dreams to think that some twenty-five years later this spaciest of songs would actually be a singalong! The world catches up to Yoko, and high time too.

On my jacket I was wearing a shiny (imitation) silver stick pin of a fly I had bought about fifteen years earlier, obviously to be a Yoko reference. I had worn it quite a bit off and on through the years. During the dub dub induced ecstasy of "Mindtrain" I decided it was time to complete a cycle. I took the pin off, squeezed through the one layer of people between me and the stage, and held out the pin to Yoko. (Remember her line from the essay on the back cover of "Feeling the Space": "I like wearing secondhand clothes because its like wearing a person"). For a quick second she peered at it, then recognition flashing, she smiled broadly and took the fly, placing it on the upturned music stand in front of her that was serving as a table for her cigarettes, lighter and other accouterments.

"Mindtrain" ended in a flurry of dub dubs and great bottleneck playing from Sean. The band exited the stage. "Oh, no! She didn't take the fly with her!" Not to worry. There were more encores ahead. More new songs. Coming back onstage, Yoko referred to a draft blowing through the building,saying "there's a wind up here." I wasted no time shouting out her famous old line "There's a wind that never dies". Her face registered the smallest bit of surprise, but she didn't miss a beat in saying "I wish THIS one would!"

A new song, "Three Blind Men" followed, and finally,a beautiful new ballad, the name of which I didn't catch, featuring Sean on co-lead vocal. Then the final bows and exit. I noticed people were handing letters and envelopes to Sean. Yoko gathered her things from the table - including the fly - and kissed us all goodnight.

"When molecules rise they converge" wrote Yoko in the liner notes to "Rising." There was most assuredly a convergence on this evening in Boston. I walked out into the night, rising, rising.