Sometimes, an idea won’t hang about waiting to be perfectly polished before floating out into the world. Sometimes, it comes with a rebel yell shouting, “do it NOW!”
The story of this tiny hearts film is one such moment.
Let’s go back to Mothering Sunday about ten years ago. I was feeling so sad about losing my own mum when I was a child. While chatting to an older, wiser woman I knew, Ruth, I noticed a small, scuffled sequin heart on the floor and leaned over to pick it up.
“I’m glad you saw that and picked that up,” she said, “because love is all the more real when it’s messy.” Peace, strength and eventually courage started to flow back in again.
Since then, I have stumbled upon hundreds of dirty hearts in my path – in gutters, cracks in pavements, forest floors, strangers’ kitchens, pub loos, my sister’s car, in the bottom of a shopping bag. They have appeared by the kettle at work, on my bedroom floor, stuck to bridges and letterboxes I pass in the street. I took pictures at first, then started saving them, and now have about 300 in a small wooden pot – maybe less than half the total I’ve ever found.
“Keep going,” they always seem to say.
Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Love is the answer. Keep going. Don’t be discouraged. Take that leap of faith, and keep going.
Like a lot of us, I can’t get my head around politics at the moment, and what our future holds. As our government made yet more baffling announcements last week, I decided it was high time I shared the love-filled and courageous message of the found hearts. Shot with a sense of urgency and a camera phone taped to the top of an upturned glass on my windowsill while rainclouds whipped past, this was rough and dirty work in progress, just like the hearts themselves.
Thrown together one confused afternoon in August. Poor in quality but high on emotion, this low-fi little film of hearts on hearts has had amongst the best responses of anything I’ve ever shared. These hearts don’t wait for their polish before being ready.
This is for all of us who are feeling confused and unsure what to do next.
”Keep going,” these little messengers eagerly say.
Keep going.