More Yoko No. 4 - Votive Offering / 28 June 2012
I have an instinctive love and understanding of wish trees. I am drawn to them. They make me think.
According to my old mate Wiki; “A wish tree is an individual tree, usually distinguished by species, position or appearance, which is used as an object of wishes and offerings. Such trees are identified as possessing a special religious or spiritual value. By tradition, believers make votive offerings in order to gain from that nature spirit, saint or goddess fulfillment of a wish”.
One of the most glamourous wish trees, the only one I wished on, stood in Waterlow Park, Highgate. It was distinguished by copper tags containing wishes that the sun reflected into the park. I guess the copper made it art.
In the health centre where I work the local bereavement counseling service installs a xmas tree every year and provides tags for anyone who wishes to remember someone who has passed on. I have used that tree to remember family, friends and people that I never knew including last year, 3 musicians. I never knew Was I wishing though and would I call it art.
As a sometime self advocacy facilitator I have worked with groups who have wanted wish trees. These have happened in day centres with art classes and trees but no one, no member of staff, ever thought to follow up on the wish for a wish tree. Strikes me these would be good for person centred planning exercises. But who cares if people in the institution wish or not.
Every now and then I take a trip to Avebury and Glastonbury. I have an interest in paganism but do not define as a pagan as according to the Pagan Federation I need to accept a divinity in my life and cannot do this. There are trees in these places, my favourite one being at Swallowhead Spring. I have seen the most amazing, thoughtful, votive offerings there. I never knew they held wishes. And some of them where Art. I must ask the editor to make a gallery of my photos.
Yoko has installed a number of wish trees at the entrance of the Serpentine Gallery. I watched people of all ages participating in the process, writing down their wishes in their own languages or with pictures. I read the tags that I could read. Many pursue the Yoko doctrine. Peace, Love, Joy, appear many times.
Other genuine wishes for good grades, holidays, birthdays, sunshine, self centred wishes maybe; but not predominating. Within all this goodness, an adolescent tells everyone, his favourite out of all the wishes is; “I wish this gallery exhibited real art not this rubbish”. Well suck it and see sucker because in making that wish you became involved in art. You joined the process, you followed the instruction, you interacted with the sculpture, you joined the performance, you were not embarrassed to do it and because you did Yoko will help your wish live on.
She will collect your tag, she will install it somewhere else. You may have been cynical but appreciate what happened, appreciate that you, me, and everyone else can join in the instruction to keep on wishing and maybe we could make this our art.
Also, what wish will you make here.
Keywords: art,avebury,glastonbury,self advocacy,votive offering,wish tree,yoko ono
Comments
Dave Lupton
/I'm a firm believer that some of the older trees hold an ancient wisdom and play a far more important part in the growth of our planet than modern society allows. Looking at the changes that incurred to the South following Henry VIII's decimation of the southern forests to build his vast fleet of war ships (it was said that a squirrel could travel between Plymouth and Dover without once touching the ground)I think that much of this can be attributed to the deforestation. Bring back the trees I say and lets have a few less people!
Colin Hambrook
/I was, may years ago, once saved by a tree - a large very beautiful, very old Oak tree in Bruce Castle Park in Tottenham N17.
Perhaps I was wishing it would save me and my unconscious wishing created the link. Certainly I 'heard' the tree, like a voice in my head, reassuring, comforting me with its several hundreds of years worth of knowledge of being in the world.
I haven't been back there for nearly a decade now, but recall it as an old friend - a place of refuge; of children's parties; of poetry and friendships past.
richard downes
/Errrrmmmmm!!!!! I am left wondering about the commonality between wishing, dreaming, hoping, praying, and working. Are they exclusive of one another? Is there a link?
Is it really any harder to work with reality than it is to wish?
I am enlightened, a product of enlightenment. It birthed my cynicism. There is no god. yet there are other aspects within me, that feel more primitive, less of me and my damned sophistication, i yearn for the numinous, that moment in which this man, in touch with the moment, moves on and writes a song.
You cannot just wish for peace, love and joy - you have to work at it. That is the hard bit.
Deborah Caulfield
/Tress are beautiful.
As a child I made wishes after blowing out birthday candles, and while tugging at the 'wishbone' from a dead chicken.
It felt weird to me, but my mother's belief was almost tangible.
My wishes were always the same; I wanted my parents to be happy, and my dad to get better (he had MS).
At Chailey I longed to be somewhere else.
I prayed my last prayer age 16 during a (failed) trip to Lourdes.
Since then and increasingly, I only want what I can help bring about by my own effort.
I love looking at and drawing trees.
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