On this day, where we commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream speech delivered on August 28, 1963. 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.” It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. “Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. Just as we cannot know justice without injustice, so too-I believe-we cannot know injustice without justice. Just as we cannot know light without dark, we cannot know dark without light. It’s not good versus bad, but rather the belief that in order for one to exist, so too does its opposite. Each side has a dot of the reverse color to show that they are not mutually exclusive, but two sides of the same coin. In the symbol of yin and yang, yin is the black side and yang is the white.
It harkened to the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, a dualist concept that describes how contrary forces can also be complementary. 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 in to the colors of the piece-black and white. So many times during the course of that painful day, and in the days that followed, I heard and read people saying that this is not who we are as a nation… but it is. Capitol incited by a person-whose title of President should have been immediately stripped-and further fueled by numerous Congressional leaders, each of whom nauseatingly turned away from their oaths in which they vowed to uphold the rules of truth and law. The entire world saw a violent siege of the U.S. One such recent point was on January 6, a day that will forever live with me, as I’m sure it will for many of us. 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. 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. Beyond being physically unable to be together with one another, this pandemic has underscored how truly untogether we are as a people. I have thought a lot about these words over the course of the past few months. Each one of us has the power to change the world. “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. “When we dream together, we create a new reality,” said Ono in a statement.
According to the museum, the 24 x 26 feet banners were created by Ono in response to the COVID-19 crisis 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. 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. Gone were the two banners advertising new exhibitions, replaced instead by ones that were each bearing a solitary word: “DREAM” and “TOGETHER.” The façade of The Met never fails to amaze me-let alone all the incredible architecture of 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.
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. 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.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
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