"Go back to the beginning, so I have..."
Wisdom from a fictional inebriated Spanish swordsman
One of the many classic scenes from The Princess Bride is when the bad guys seem to be winning and Fezzik, the Giant, comes upon his friend Inigo, the Spanish swordsman. This encounter gives Fezzik hope for finding the Man in Black (just go with it - if you haven’t seen the movie, you actually should really stop reading this and see it). Anyway, when Fezzik finds Inigo, Inigo is disspirited and also quite spirited (aka drunk) and he says to Fezzik,
“I am waiting for you, Vizzini. You told me to go back to the beginning, so I have. This is where I am, and this is where I’ll stay. I will not be moved.”
I tried to find a youtube clip of the scene but could only find one really low quality one. C’est la vie. Things are feeling frayed for our heroes in the film at this point and this moment represents a step towards restoration.
I had several conversations on Wednesday as well where there was a similar theme of feeling frayed and I’m feeling that a bit as well. In times like that, it is good to go back to the beginning, back to foundations. So, I’m going back to the beginning for the next chunk of time here at Imago Scriptura. I feel a need to jumpstart some of my photographic creativity and so I am going back to the beginning - color. (BTW - there was a great article I found when searching for the video clip - it was from a writer named Bill True using this same scene to talk about when a writer gets stuck. A solution? Go back to the beginning - here the link)
When I have facilitated groups on contemplative photography, I always begin with color. The first week we would meet, the assignment would be to choose a color and intentionally seek to photograph that color throughout the week. The intention was to focus on something simple to help with the practice of noticing. It was beautiful as we would gather the next time and people would share about how they never realized how much _________ (insert color here) there was around them until they started looking specifically for that color.
This was all sparked on Wednesday morning as I was feeling like I was photographing the same places and the same things. What lit the spark was this photo.
The brilliant red (unusual a bit for this early Spring) took me back to those contemplative photography sessions, back to the beginning. And then I started seeing more and more red on the walk. And the idea was born.
So, for the most part, over the next few months, I am going to be posting generally 1x/week on Wednesdays and sharing seven images of the color I was focusing on. As I shared above, I am starting with red. Then next Wednesday I’ll share all the red photographs and introduce the next color. There may be some reflections on the experience and meaning of that color as well.
As True wrote in the article linked above, “…go back to the core of the story.” The core of what I share here is about noticing. So, like I do in my contemplative photography classes I’m going back to the beginning of noticing color. I’d love to have you share colors that you see along the way as well. See you next Wednesday with seven days of noticing the color red.
We’ll see about getting Scout in on the act too…(even though her visual color spectrum is much more limited than ours).
Here’s a blast from the past photo of Scout. Two years ago this past Wednesday when we went to northern Ohio for the total solar eclipse…
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed