Ten days from now one of John Lennon’s dreams will finally come true.
On what would have been the legendary singer’s 67th birthday, his wife, Yoko Ono will unveil the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Ono said the monument is something that she and Lennon spoke about at length more than 40 years ago and now, finally, their dream is coming to fruition.
The Imagine Peace Tower is a light sculpture that will beam light from a wishing well bearing the words “imagine peace” in 24 languages. The tower’s light will glow each year from October 9th to December 8th (Lennon was shot and killed by deranged fan Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980), “so it has the feeling of the shortness of life, but the light is eternal,” Ono said.
What people may not realize is that the concept for the tower was entirely Ono’s. The 74-year-old recently revealed to news reporters that she came up with the idea in 1965 and didn’t hesitate to share it with Lennon. Ono says he was supportive of the idea and promised that it would one day become reality.
Unfortunately, Lennon didn’t live long enough to the end result, but if he did Ono says he would be “very happy.”
On October 9th Ono will travel to the coast of the Island of Vioey in Iceland to see the masterpiece herself. Before she gets there engineers from Iceland and Japan who worked from Ono’s design will be adding the finishing touches to the 55-foot platform that sits beneath a 6 1/2-foot-tall wishing well, which houses nine spotlights. If you are wondering why the tower was built in Iceland Ono said she chose the location “because it is a very eco-friendly country” that relies on geothermal energy. What’s more, she says she needed to find a place big enough to accommodate her entire design, which includes the tower and a yet-to-be planted forest. Yes, a forest of trees. About five years ago Ono decided she needed a place to keep the thousands of wishes she had collected through the “wish trees” she had set up at gallery shows around the world.
“I was collecting the wishes for world peace,” she said. “I thought: ‘I have to put them in a tower or something … a peace tower.'”
So far Ono says she has collected about 495,000 wishes that she plans to bury in “capsules” around the tower, each topped with a tree that will someday form a forest.
If you have a wish that you would like Ono to place in the peace tower you can submit it by clicking here.
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