Gehry Day

On the day after Halloween walking silently across a cordoned off street my son’s nine-year-old eyes keenly read giant silver shapes like so many words on a page. He was six when our watching years began. We watched in searing summer and in the calm of winter, at times nonchalantly, at others wide-eyed. We watched in anticipation as one man’s vision took shape before us, now we walked together toward what has become for my son the archetype of imagination’s potential.

Climbing the stairs a few paces ahead of me, donning his idea of the perfect costume–Gehry’s concert hall in the form of a hat–my son was deaf to the buzz that his presence created. Surveying the lay of the land, connecting one by one with the massive shapes, he was unaware that his presence detracted attention from the icon itself.

While gazing at the shimmering rose pool, a couple shaking their heads in amusement walked right up to my little boy and invited him to be part of their photo, a photo I was asked to snap. As quick as the fascinated strangers wrapped their arms around my son’s small shoulders, the shutter clicked. Handing the camera back to a man I will surely never see again, he flashed a grin and thanked me for the experience as my son quickly resumed his voyage of discovery.

At the very edge of the structure he reached for silver as I watched a man approach the hat only to discover, eyes dropping, that it rested on the head of a small boy. Introducing himself to my son as an award-winning architect he listened intently to the tale. Head shaking, eyes twinkling, he patted my son’s back, and looked to the sky in wonderment. In the end he asked for my son’s name and promised to commit it to memory, “I’ll be watching for you Taylor.”

Then came a barrage of curious strangers—tourists who spoke foreign languages, fascinated parents, students, security guards, and weary teachers–who all demanded a moment with my boy and his great silver-winged hat. Taylor gladly shared the story of watching the icon slowly come to life, of the man named Frank O. Gehry who made buildings inspired by fish, and of his own architecture research project that gave him the idea for the Halloween hat that triggered the storytelling in the first place.

For two glorious hours I watched a swarm of people who came to experience an architectural inauguration catch a glimpse of something they had no intention of seeing, a boy wearing an architectural hat. As I stood surrounded by Gehry’s silver sculpture pondering my son’s interactions with perfect strangers a man touched my shoulder, interrupting my reverie, and looked intently into my eyes, “You must be doing something right if your kid is into Gehry.”

Finally I realized that these strangers were starving for something to reach out and touch, starving for hope in a bland world. It struck me that creativity is indeed a great magnet. People had come in droves to honor a man who encourages them to believe that outrageous dreams are possible. This was a slice of humanity that had journeyed afar to identify with a silver-winged exclamation point. My son went a step further audaciously locking arms with Gehry imploring, “Look, me too!”

Donald Justice’s, Poem to be Read at 3 A.M., and Edward Hopper’s painting, Early Sunday Morning, remind us of our longing to eradicate a haunting sense of disconnection. We speed self-centered through life, avoiding our humanity and occasionally, if we are lucky, we come face to face with images that halt us. Like Justice’s poem, Hopper’s painting forces us to face our chaotic lives, to slow down, hang our heads and whisper, “What have we done?” Gehry’s architectural masterpiece begs the question, “Why do we hide in dimly lit boxes behind blinds that keep us safely isolated from the risk of imagination?” Like Justice and Hopper before him, Gehry presents an ominous challenge to chase away the complacency that isolates humanity. My son, wearing a hat inspired by an architect he has never met, opened (and left ajar) the door of imagination for people he will likely never meet again. His hat drew connections like a magnet, broke down walls, and briefly caused lives to intersect in a way that is noteworthy. Like Hopper, Justice, and Gehry before him, my son responded to the question, opened the blinds, and let the real thing in.