This past November we were in Chicago for a weekend and while we were hanging out at our most favorite place in Chicago, the millennium park, a young guy approached me as Divi and I were running a little ahead. He introduced himself as a university student and asked me if I’d be willing to answer a few questions, I was a little skeptical and he put me at ease by saying that they are easy questions and he need it for a research project he is doing. I agreed before realizing that they are going to video record my answers without knowing what the questions were about, but it was too late to back out. So there I stood with a microphone attached to my coat and me looking nervously at a harmless camera. The girl behind the camera was sweet and asked me basic questions like my name etc and the boy then said he’d like to ask me the questions, so there I stood answering questions about what I feel about the architecture of Chicago in general, the millennium park and then specifically the cloud gate or the bean as my eyes wavered between the person asking question, the camera and the person behind the camera.
I am not sure about the exact questions they asked or the specific answers I gave but my words as they came out of my own mouth stirred something in my mind, it made me think about the words cause they were obviously mine but I don’t recollect thinking about them. It was something my subconscious must have processed and much later after they stopped asking those questions I tried to recollect them and was amazed to find out why indeed I love this place as much as I do…
So, here it is, the cloud gate:
I think could gate is such an apt name for the shiny and curvy sculpture build to be the conversation piece of the living room of downtown Chicago; although bean is very catchy. Designed by British artist Anish Kapoor, the name cloud gate represents the sculpture well while leaving the interpretation open to various possibilities. Like clouds, like reflections, like perceptions and like the ever changing skies, its meaning are constantly evolving with our thoughts, it is a reflection of our thoughts and speaks a loads about the world too.
Depending upon where you are standing and what you are viewing, each and every individual will get a different perspective of their own reflection and of the scenery around them. Each single inch, right-left-up-down changes something, no two views are the same and no two viewers are the same. Yes, I am talking about the bean, the cloud, the gate… the gateway in to the soul of this world, the collective perspective, the conglomeration of different views, it represents everything.
It’s like life itself, the more you look, the more you’ll find and if you just pass it by, it’s a shine object that somebody else created that you have no contribution to, that is unless you look deeper, let your light bounce off of it and see others light too. I am so amazed by this sculpture, the more I see it, the more I think it, and the more it makes me think. It could be a ‘god’ of sorts, cause ‘god’ is nothing but the good in us and if we see us in the right perspective then we see the goodness within us and around us…
