I've been thinking about light a lot lately. That bright, shiny stuff. What you can do with it, the different qualities it can have, how it bends. I've been thinking about simple lighting effects and how striking they can be, and how meaningful, like the times we build forts as children and huddle around just one flashlight. The rush that comes from a light shut off, quickly, without warning. The speed in which our eyes adjust to darkness. What it feels like to walk alone, outside, far away from the city, on a very dark night. Candlelight. Streetlights. Headlights. Nightlights.
I've also, for various reasons, been thinking about Peter Pan. And about magic. How we can transfer magic to an object, just by saying so. How telling someone, say, not to sit in a particular chair suddenly gives that chair a stoic, ominous quality, and also a pull. Now there is temptation to sit in a chair that you previously never knew existed. You are suddenly very aware of the chair, the room reorients around it. Only because someone said, "avoid that chair!"
In the case of Peter, or rather, Tinkerbell, someone said, "this twinkling light is a fairy," and so it became a fairy.
I've gone towards the light now (har har), and in doing so begin to put a pin in visuals where a particular kind of light makes a body appear both magical and strange. Look:
and here:
and then here again, and I don't know if it's a detour or if detours even really exist:
In the interest of full disclosure, I'll also admit that there was one other that I decided not to post, a video of a little girl spinning in a Cinderella dress, in the dark, under a street light. It's so dark everywhere else but where the light shines that it's hard to make out her head, only the dress and arms, and the film quality is poor enough that the images are washed to an almost-black-and-almost-white. And she not saying a word. I did not post it because, to be honest, it creeped me the fuck out. But I guess in a good way, because here I am, still thinking about it. Still, I think it better described than seen, so it can keep its poetry, and stay out of your nightmares.