Most of us think of shadows, merely, as displacements of light. Yet, they seem to have a subtle emotional effect on us, as well.
While sitting in a park, one midday, I saw two 3-year-olds, a girl and a boy, giggling and laughing, while trying to beat their moving shadows into submission as they danced around thrashing at the moving “obstacles” with sticks. It made me laugh.
Later in the afternoon, I saw an old man gesturing and muttering to his day’s-end shadow, moving beside him as he walked, northerly. It brought a tear to my eyes.
A dear friend of mine considers shadows as equalizers because their silence gives no one’s shadow an advantage over another’s, despite their everyday life status.
True. But to me, they’re so much more!
Painters know that the hue of a shadow is actually blue. Black and white are shades, not colors. The “black” and “white” of the photo of the flying bird herewith are the result of striping out the hues.
Our “seeing” of the forms of objects is the result of how light interacts with them. No light, nothing to see.
So, it is we who give what we do see a name for the sensation those things or feelings give us.
Early twentieth-century Black singers like W. C. Handy gave a color to the depression originally encountered by alcoholic withdrawal.
Then, Mamie Smith’s renditions and “torch” singer Ruth Etting’s singing, “I’ll be blue, just thinking of you…,” solidified the color of heartache emotions and has even allowed for the basking in smothering darkness.
Now, I believe it is necessary for ALL of us to become painters, by coming out of our inner darkness and giving color to our worlds resulting from the self-generated inner light in which we see them.
The poet Dylan Thomas has warned us to “rage against the dying of the light,” and to “not go gentle into that good night.”
So, despite the even more dire issues the 21st century has presented us, it is more urgent than ever for each of us to do the best we can to crawl, walk, run or fly directly into the light, so the shadows of darkness can be left behind.
Photo Credit: William OSuch