Today, apparently, is ‘Blue Monday’ and I am slightly helplessly drawn to these images of spring-time buttercups. They glow for me in times of grisly winter darkness, and point ahead to what we have to look forward to when Spring arrives.
These stills are from a work-in-progress piece I’ve cut together with footage I shot ages ago now, and keep coming back to. I shot it on the hoof; a spontaneous moment during an afternoon out, capturing the slightly delirious feeling you get when emerging from a very long, cold run out the back end of winter hibernation, into a hit of warm sunshine. The way the buttercups were dancing in gusts of wind echoed how I felt – slightly euphoric, a bit crazy, hazy, small, warm at last. I was searching for soothing, calm little flowers but they wouldn’t stay still, so I just followed their prompt and cut it all together into a dancing sort of edit that at times is quite disorientated and dream-like. Appropriate, probably.
I’ve explored various ideas of putting words with this and nothing quite worked as well as the D.H.Lawrence poem ‘Trust’. Even then, I haven’t managed to do much to it yet, perhaps getting hung up on it having to look ‘right’, realising there probably is no right, and I have to simply pile in and—in the spirit of the buttercups—just have a play.
And what great words to play with when the world is struggling so hard to find good ways to communicate truth at the moment.
The poem is both a slightly exasperated rant and love letter, urging that we be ‘sun’ to each other, but allow for darkness too. We compensate for one another’s falls, we reflect, we shine for each other, we retreat and shine again. It’s a rhythm of days, seasons, sleep and awake. It is resilient and persistent, devoted. It’s about the encouragement of being true to each other, a light to each other, able to to be lovingly honest and trust that it will be received with good grace for our mutual growth, and peace. We could do with more of that.
So, I shall keep on with my buttercup word play. Not sure if this will ever make a presentable piece of work but I’m finding it a sweet way to meditate on helpful things and experiment with some new typography expressions while I’m at it.
It’s turning a blue Monday into a lovely, warm, hope-filled yellow one.
An excerpt from ‘Trust’ by D.H.Lawrence
…But I think you may trust
the sun in me
that glows with just
as much glow as you see
in me, and no more.
But if it warms
your heart's quick core
why then trust it, it forms
one faithfulness more.
And be, oh be
a sun to me,
not a weary, insistent
personality
but a sun that shines
and goes dark, but shines
again and entwines
with the sunshine in me
till we both of us
are more glorious
and more sunny.