On the concrete dreaming

Bodies are strewn across the floor.
Most stay motionless, knees bent, soles of the feet on the concrete. Their faces glow red with reflected light, reflected thoughts palpable and bouncing through the pressurized space.

When adults lay on trampled ground and whisper and dream together the artist is doing something right.

I saw the name Anish Kapoor on the banners in front of the Grand Palais in Paris and I knew I had heard of him, but what was the exhibit? There were no fliers or notes of explanation for "Leviathan," just a long line snaking towards the entrance and a sign that proclaimed:
"Warning: Pressurized room."
Sounds more than interesting. I'm in.

Through the revolving doors. Pop go the ears, dim goes the light. Immersed in a rosy bath of daylight shining through the plastic fabric small groups and artist-looking types en solo wander and snap photographs. Three large chambers open up in front and on either side of the central public area. Lines (seams) meet at angles on curved walls and in the center of each globular chamber like the inverse of the sun's bright rays. The inflated ceiling is hundreds of feet above the hundreds of eyeballs looking aloft at the changing images projected onto the fabric: the superstructure of the Grand Palais is visible when the sun emerges from the clouds and then slowly dissipates and leaves the crowd in a soft amber light.
Womb, cave, stomach of a whale: images in my head rise and fall away with the collective breath of the room.

After a while legs straighten and men and women in suits and dresses haul themselves into a sitting position, pull themselves reluctantly to their feet, small smiles traceable on shadowed lips. They (we) file out through the revolving doors (Pop go the ears pop go the senses as they are revolved back into reality) and we are directed into the space outside of the space.

The enormity of the work is visible under the glass and metal shell of the Grand Palais as people wander around the outside of the dark form as ants around a trio of basketballs.

It seems people are still smiling or dreaming or thinking about the silliness and grandness of it all. Meanwhile others are starving, wars are raging, violence is rampant in too many places and yet here is an artist spending/getting millions for creating a big blow up room.

What is the point?
The point is someone dreamed up a seemingly impossible structure and created his dream.
The point is that one does not expect an amber womb in the Grand Palais.
The point is that all those people milling about that big blow up room took time to think and dream and step out of "real" space for a few moments in the middle of Paris in the middle of a work day in the middle of what I'm sure is a very busy life (whose isn't?).

We need these moments, these beautiful distractions, to lay on the floor like a child, to look up at the false sky and forget the wars and violence for a few minutes and watch the colors and shadows mutate and dissipate or grow brighter as we hold our breath and remember that just about anything is possible.