“Choose a stone and hold it until all your anger and sadness is gone.” Yoko Ono

I had a free day in Toronto recently, so I trekked to the Gardiner museum intent on experiencing the Yoko Ono exhibit, The Riverbed.

I trudged up the stairs to the third floor and entered through the door with the large and ominous warning that photos were not allowed. Inside I was confronted with a trail of river rocks, arranged across an open space. On the wall were written the words; “Choose a stone and hold it until all your anger and sadness is gone.”

This was not what I had expected. I had come hoping to be enlightened by Yoko’s work, not by my own efforts. Did I really have to follow the directions? Why did I have to be part of the experience? Could I simply observe?

I noticed two older women sitting along the side wall. Each was holding a rock in their lap. Apparently, they had felt the need to obey the directions. One of them was cradling her rock like a small baby. Were there right and wrong ways to hold your stone? How did one decide what stone to choose in the first place?

My conundrum was made all the more confusing by the simple fact that I didn’t feel anger or sadness. Should I have? Was being sad a requirement to attend?

Overcome by all these questions, I decided to simply sit on one of the meditation cushions arranged around the edge of the room and contemplate the scene. What did it mean that I was engaging in an act of detachment in a space that was asking for my involvement? Did this decision reveal some greater failing in my personality? Was I an inadequate consumer of art?

After a while, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a real river, where the sound of water rushing over stones creates a kind of relaxing music. It almost worked until I began to wonder if the rocks in the room were playing a part in my meditation Were they even necessary? I was pulled out of my fantasy by some unseen force that pushed me to open my eyes and once again contemplate the stones.

Still, I did not feel any tug to stand up and choose a stone. Instead, I was flooded with more questions. If I did pick up a stone was I supposed to return it to the same place? Or was I supposed to artfully rearrange it and add to the overall meaning of the piece? The enormity of choices began to make the experience unpleasant.

I noticed that one of the smaller stones had writing on it. Just a few letters that I couldn’t make out clearly, but the more I squinted, the more it seemed that the letters spelled out the word IKEA.

IKEA?! Was this some elaborate joke? A commentary on our obsession with breaking our world into a series of discrete pieces that can be easily reassembled, if only the instructions ever made any sense. Or was it a sly form of corporate sponsorship?

As I continued to watch the stones, I began to feel like I was a sentry assigned to make sure none of them moved on their own. What would I do if one of them suddenly decided it no longer wanted to be a part of this experience?

I wondered how much the stones had already moved. It seemed unlikely that I was looking at Yoko’s original arrangement. Was the movement being tracked? Was there a time-lapse video that showed the riverbed moving around the room as if forced by the unseen hands of geological time? If so, would it create the allusion of a flowing river like the one I had created in my mind?

My contemplation was interrupted by the arrival of a docent, carrying a clipboard. Ah, now this is interesting, I thought. She carefully walked around the edges of the gathering of stones, making quick notes. Was she the person in charge of tracking their movement or was she just counting them to make sure that none of the visitors had pocketed one for a souvenir? Did she know each stone individually? Call them by pet rock names perhaps.

By now my knees were crying out that the modified lotus I had been sitting it was no longer an option. I uncrossed my legs and began to consider the process of rising. Just then, a young child, around three years old, came bursting into the space. She was wearing bright yellow rain boots and pink ribbons in her hair. She was a riot of color and movement as sheskipped from rock to rock stopping at random to pick up any that caught her fancy.

She would carry it for a while as she continued to skip and then unceremoniously drop it wherever she was at that moment her attention faded. I watched as she did this for a few minutes before being distracted by the other parts of the exhibit and running off as her slightly frantic parents chased after.

I finally rose and approached the riverbed. I picked up the stone that had the writing on it. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed not to be a promo for a global retail brand but instead the word, “heal.” As I very carefully laid it back in the same place I had found it I wondered; “Is it possible to be healed if we don’t even know that we are suffering?”