Yes, that was Yoko Ono whispering into the bark of a cherry tree at the Tidal Basin yesterday morning. The artist, performer and widow of John Lennon visited Washington on Sunday and Monday to bring her "Imagine Peace" project to the city.
In yesterday's brief "Wish Tree" ceremony at the foot of the Jefferson Memorial, the 74-year-old Ono invited people to write wishes on small pieces of paper and tie them to the branches of potted cherry trees. Ono has installed the trees in cities across the globe and says they were inspired by temple wish trees that she saw during her youth in Japan. . . .
Ono promised to collect all the Washington wishes and add them to her cache -- she claims to have more than 100,000 collected from trees throughout the world. The papers will be incorporated into the artist's Imagine Peace Tower, which will be installed later this year in Iceland. Ono was vague about the structure's exact design and said it would be made of light.
What would I wish for? (After world peace, obviously.) I don't know. Right now, sitting at work, I wish that every day could be a holiday.
And I guess it would be nice if Elliott Smith were alive and happy and still making great music. Or at least that he knows how much his songs meant to so many people.
It's too bad I don't live in DC anymore.
Edited to add: According to the Street Scenes DC website, people who can't make it to the wish tree can mail their wishes to:
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER
P.O. Box 1009
121 Reykjavik
Iceland
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