Andrey Grebenetsky-Waterfalls Visual Diary-Revision
When you reside in New York City, you tend to lose your soul. You become self-centered; a blank face in the crowd. Every morning, lunch hour and evening, you autonomously do what you have been conditioned to do by the crowd. Go to school or work, go to lunch, and go home. If you’re observant, you might even notice the majestic city you are a part of. But there is something many of us forget. My experience with Olafur’s Eliasson’s waterfalls was significant beyond his artwork or even the city. I was confined on a boat with other people. Living, breathing people. The same people we nonchalantly shove past or walk into because we’re too busy being mindless drones on the street. On that boat, the city and waterfalls dulled out, and the people shone through. We are the city. Eliasson reminded me that our life experiences are not meant to be ours alone. They are meant to be shared.
Our shared experience is the sum of it’s parts. The singular presence of every person in our class and on the boat contributed to both our individual perception and our group perception. Our development as individuals could be likened to human puzzles. Each of us is our own puzzle and the pieces to that puzzle are the people who influence us. Pieces come in all shapes and sizes, just like if a barrel is filled with rocks, pebbles, and sand. The rocks, our closest family members and friends are our foundation but they leave holes in our “barrel.” The pebbles are everybody else we encounter in life ranging from acquaintances to close friends to rivals. The sand fills up the remainder of the space in our barrels and represents our experiences.
Without the rocks and pebbles, we are only shells of our true selves.
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