CAN WE DREAM TOGETHER?
DREAM TOGETHER (2020) by Yoko Ono. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photography by Rakhee Bhatt
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
—Yoko Ono
One early morning in August, with the air uncharacteristically sweet for the season and the sun following suit in its gentility, I found myself walking down a hushed Fifth Avenue. Grazing the eastern side of Central Park, my steps were slow but deliberately forward moving until I found myself stopped in front of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The façade of The Met never fails to amaze me——along with much of the incredible architecture in New York City——but today I was paused for something else that was adorning the spaces between the Corinthian columns flanking the museum’s main entrance. Gone were the two banners advertising new exhibitions, replaced instead by ones that were each bearing a solitary word: “DREAM” and “TOGETHER.”
The black lettered words against a white field were the work of the magnificent Yoko Ono, and were the first time in The Met’s 150-year history that the space was used to display art. According to the museum, the 24’ x 26’ banners were created by Ono in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to serve as a message of unity and positivity, and the words were first spoken by the artist decades prior during a time that was also troubling in many other ways.
“When we dream together, we create a new reality,” said Ono in a statement. “The world is suffering terribly, but we are together, even if it can be hard to see at times, and our only way through this crisis will be together. Each one of us has the power to change the world. Remember love. DREAM TOGETHER.”
I have thought a lot about these words over the course of the past few months. Beyond being physically unable to be together with one another, this pandemic has underscored how truly untogether we are as a people. We are split on some of the most basic fundamentals that this country laid down as a supposed veracity to each and every one of us, though it’s certainly not news how those “unalienable rights” have consistently been fought against and systemically denied throughout human history. This past year has merely brought us to a sharp reckoning of these facts, with the tipping points being far too many now to count.
But it doesn’t have to be like this.
DREAM TOGETHER (2020) by Yoko Ono. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photography by Rakhee Bhatt
When I was standing in front of the artwork by Ono, I noticed the shadow of sun moving across the word “DREAM” until it perfectly dissected the middle of the banner into the colors of the piece——black and white. It harkened back to the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, a dualist concept that describes how contrary forces can also be complementary. In the symbol of yin and yang, yin is the black side and yang is the white. Each side has a dot of the reverse color to show that they are not mutually exclusive, but two sides of the same coin. It’s not good versus bad, but rather the belief that in order for one to exist, so too does its opposite. Just as we cannot know light without dark, we cannot know dark without light. Just as we cannot know justice without injustice, so too——I believe——we cannot know injustice without justice.
“Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream speech delivered on August 28, 1963.
On this day, where we commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are reminded as a nation of an extraordinary human being who bravely used his voice and feet to show the way forward. Dr. King simultaneously called upon the nation to embrace its messy past——to look at the yin and yang within each of us——while moving deliberately toward living the embodiment of our nation’s creed of equality for all. Over 57 years ago, Dr. King stood 18 steps from the top landing of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke to us of his dreams. And everything in our physical world——our reality——begins with a dream. We can continue to work on making his dreams and ours a collective reality.
So…can we dream together?
Originally published on January 18, 2021
