HOW DO YOU FEEL IN THE DARK?

How do YOU feel in the dark?

If you search “dark in London” on google, you face one, undeniable fact: there is no dark in London, only its coverage, its marketing, its venues or implied notions of security, safety and the CCTV family... a history of darkness which might have faded away.

I come from a place where at night it feels like dark, it silently sounds like dark. I’m not suggesting stars and a shiny moon; I mean total darkness, in contrast with London’s lack of emptiness, and constant artificiality. I mean somewhere where the night ‘gives peace a chance’.

This village, like all places, has its weakness, and holds a strange national record: it is the French town with the most cameras per inhabitant: 1 for every 40 heads. For a town of 9000 inhabitants, I hope your mind hasn’t gone blank to solve this sombre mathematical equation: you can see how… absurdly similar it all is to your capital of adoption.

Now light doesn’t play much of a role in local political debates on safety in a place which is already dying with silence, but I do find solace in the night it gives to me, darkness as beautiful as a pearl mirror alive and dreaming.

Do I find my roots in this? Peace is very much an elevating thing – Mr Lennon might say. But our lives are so un-rooted anyway! So from roots, to peace, to un-rooted places in constant flow where life is born and noise is mourned…

To cut with the preaching, I come back to my initial question: HOW DO YOU FEEL IN THE DARK? Dark signifies a living colour here when it does a solemn moment there. Dark as a processed film, as a raw and battered piece of poetry written on a table of a hype club, dark made into dreams, dances, into hiding places.

Dark, finally, when the solemn writer of the night comes and sprays his desire on the walls of the [re]public, dark as it is, raw meet for morning newspapers, and black smile for the sun.

When will we start shooting in the dark, Mr. Director sir?

Dylan James

http://djlondonphotomix.blogspot.com/

12/02/08