Glacia’s meditations
So the niece and I decided to check out a couple of the installations from Nuit Blanche on Saturday night. Those of you unfamiliar, Nuit Blanche started in Paris and this is the second year that Toronto has done it. It's billed here as 'an all night art thing'.
From 7:30 pm to 7 am there are a hundred art installations in three areas of Toronto. I'm blessed by the fact that I live right smack dab in the middle of one of those areas so that the niece and I could at least look at some. (Our run for the cure was the next morning, so we couldn't spend more that a little time looking at it.).
But children, this is what you really need to hear.
On the north side of Stanley Park, there is a children's play park with swings, slides, etc. One artist, Simla Civelek turned one of the swings into a Wish Swing.
It was wrapped in silver fabric and covered in fairy lights. You were invited to take a number and take a turn on the swing.
Who could resist?
When my turn came, this lovely woman with a Birmingham accent took me to tent and asked me to select my music for the swing. You couldn't select by song, but rather by a number. So I selected 977. She put a cd into a player and then into a big fuzzy white bag that I ended up throwing over my shoulder.
I was taken to the swing and then Simla came to me wearing a white wedding dress and a crown of fairy lights. She was absolutly gorgeous with lovely curly/wavy dark hair and dark eyes. She wore silver nailpolish and silver lipstick. She told me to think of a dream that I've always had while she pushed me on the swing.
She pushed the play button on the player and began to push me.
It looked like this.
Imagine. It's night time in a playground, the weather is perfect - not hot nor cold and there's not a lot of traffic going by so it's kind of quiet. You're on a swing covered in silver and lights, listening to a beautiful song and dreaming of your biggest dream while a beautiful woman pushes you higher and higher.
It was incredible. It'll never happen again, but I'm so happy that I could do that once in my life. It was like being in a surreal movie.
At the end she took me back to the tent, but we went to the back half of it and sat on a bench. She asked me if I wanted to hear something. Of course I agreed and she picked up a book and read me a passage of poetry. At the end, she wrote down the name of the music I listened to on a black piece of paper in silver pen .
You can hear the music here:
She then asked me for a word that would make me think of my dream - which she wrote on the other side of the paper.
I think about this whole experience when I go to bed at night now. It was very strange/beautiful.
Nuit Blanche has made me fall in love with my city all over again and I honestly think this is the best festival we put on. I heard complaints on the street that it's commercialized art and that the whole even is more of a party than art.
Get over yourselves.
The park across the street from me had Japanese animation show sunrise to sunset, the south side of Stanley Park had a baseball diamond pitch covereted to a starry night where you could sit on blankets and sleeping bags and look up, and the CAMH had a giant carpet designed like a road running up along one of it's car paths. When we walked past it, a girl asked us if we would like a piece of carpet. Like you have to even ASK.
It was beautiful and fun - so again, get over yourselves.
Even the moon had fun.
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