To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
– Ursula K. Le Guin
Part of you – not part of you. Make it appear – make it disappear. It can terrify or mollify. It follows – it precedes.
You can stretch it, shrink it, lure it. Hide in, hide from, leap over or overlap. You can corral one to keep the UV rays off, text on your too reflective smartphone at high noon or conduct a clandestine affair under its wingspan.
Without a shadow an image lacks dimension. Without a shadow your story cries for tension. Without a shadow there will be no depth.
Never underestimate the steel of a stealthy shadow or the magic of illusion. Beware the insidious shadow of the past (or present or future) that doesn’t wish to be usurped. It slyly blocks the source of light to keep you in the dark.
You can shadow box your demons, create a shadow box of spoils, or lose yourself to find yourself and transform negative to positive.
I love to watch the shadow dance of a candle flame divide in two, then leap and join, move side-to-side, flick up and down, tease and toy. I’m certain a secret message lies within from someone I have yet to name. Last night I came so close I almost cracked the code.
To tease a buried memory or stir up friction in a story, dramatic shadows create texture and reveal the third dimension. To heighten emotional response, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velasquez and Caravaggio practiced the technique of chiaroscuro. Hitchcock, Huston, Welles and other masters of film noir perfected the art of creepy contrasts. The harsher the light – the darker the shadow.
Of course shadow travel involves the element of risk. You could get tangled in unwanted trash, hook up with a charlatan or make a mistake with a chameleon. You could also stumble on a trove of ancient treasure or discover a missing piece. But where else can you orchestrate a journey, arrange the angles of the vision, position all the highlights, and shade the underbellies and the caves?
Don’t be afraid of your own shadow. You can always shine a light on it and blow its cover. Take your time – see what you find. Look around they’re everywhere. Look ahead, check under the bed, look behind, inside your mind – ah, I’ll bet there’s jagged shadows there to find.
Every writer, painter, sculptor, musician and magician knows the value of the shadow.
So go now – find one or lose one – chase one or embrace one.
I am currently working in a hospital and we are training a new worker – it's called "shadowing" – the act of following around a trained worker until the new person learns the ropes. So in this sense a "shadow" is a worker in training. In this sense, it is a potential value learning to be valuable. Following someone in the light until they, too can be "in the light" as well. A not-fully-realized entity that follows the fully formed entity. I liked that analogy a lot. Striving for fruition and manifestation. The dark/light contrast. To be in the light, there has to be a portion "in the dark"…There is just no other way around it. People have wonderful qualities – and yet we also all have defects. Yin/Yang…..there must be the existence of opposites – to truly be balanced.
Shadows really do make things realistic. Nothing is 100% bright and sunny. There is always at least a sliver of darkness to everything. This can be taken literally and metaphorically. I love your references to the late masters who used chiaroscuro. Like you said, they really understood how to play with strong light sources and strategically convey certain emotional responses from their viewers by displaying their subjects in specific lightings, never being apprehensive to use that darkness. I believe that-just like the masters- if we lose that apprehension to tap into the scarier, darker sides of things, we can create revelations of our own.
Shadows follow you everywhere, it doesn’t matter if you want them to or not. Everything has a “shadow” or a dark side to it, where there is light there is also darkness, literally and figueratively. I like how you say you shrink, stretch or hide a shadow, because shadows can appear in many different forms. Everyone has their own view on darkness, but whether you want them or not shadows will always follow you.
Art in any form is a mystery and an affirmation of life!
This reminds me of the Trickster mentioned in Joseph Campbell’s writings. I’m quick to assume it’s the shadows that embody the Trickster but the Sun can just as easily cloak the truth in white hot light, blinding me to truth’s location.