Tuesday, 21 April 2009

yellow






my yellow sping - quite trivial when compared to ffflaneur's most refined combative melancholic's grey guide to Spring in general (alas i am afraid vivid colours always lose in front of a 'grey so soothing, so lenient'). but i get a little help from swiss (i can't give you the link because the colour poem is not online anymore), who states quite convincingly that 'yellow is despair'. and thus we go back to the eternal april as the 'cruellest month', 'mixing memory and desire' (ffflaneur, i can't help it either :-).

and for this particular mixture of white blossoms, forsythia and an even more yellow willow, the Japanese reference couldn't be absent either: this small poem, a gift that i got today, which seems to have inspired Heidegger as well.


to smell a plum blossom
in a cherry blossom
and let both bloom
on a willow branch
--thus is my wish.


Nakahara Tokinori













































27 comments:

  1. this blog makes me happy! I am floating on your dreamy bridge, it is a beautiful day and I will turn off my computer and go outside now!

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  2. thank you for all the yellow. i'll hang on to that until colors finally start to appear here, too...

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  3. I really like the white blossom against the yellow but even more so the red roof against that gorgeous yellow willow.

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  4. Beau je ne vois que liberté chez toi Roxana... Si je comprends bien tu travail en argentique sur de la pellicule ou en numérique en presets une imagination ou que cette liberté de penser un unique trésor ; par contre pas si d’accord avec toi , je pense que l’image et plus percutante que les mots ; cela entre dans notre émotion intérieur transforme les couleurs en une magie…

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  5. this yellow is gorgeous!!!Voilà ton secret tu utilise un bon vieil argentique..Oh! tant de beauté et de talent!!!

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  6. i love the blurry, drunken yellow, with the green nearly lost there.

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  7. so beautiful.. what can i say.. like to smell & touch them though.. :p

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  8. hi babbler, your lovely words have made me smile :-)

    thank you for stopping by!

    and yes, go outside, this is the best thing to do in april.

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  9. no colours there yet, Manuela? here it is almost rare to find blossoms anymore - well except my dear lilac!!! and some forlorn magnolias.

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  10. Sorlil, i shouted: oh my god i have to take that one, had the car stopped right at a crossroad and jumped out like a storm to get that willow against the red roof :-)

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  11. allan, je travaille en argentique et puis apres avoir scanne le negatif j'utilise le photoshop et le lightroom pour des corrections...
    mais non, je n'avais pas dit que les mots sont plus percutants que l'image, j'avais seulement compare la photographie en couleur avec celle blanc et noir, j'ai dit que les couleurs vives perdent toujours devant la subtilite d'un gris, par exemple...
    mais je suis bien d'accord avec toi pour ce qui est de la magie des couleurs...

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  12. omami :-) merci!!! oui, un argentique, mais il n'est pas vieux du tout... j'aime les qualites differentes des films, a chacun sa propre couleur et texture, cela est inimitable en numerique... par contre, on gagne plus de liberte et flexibilite...

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  13. b, you went directly to the one i could label as 'depressive' - for me, that is - i wonder why :-)

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  14. Peter, i don't get the 'though' - me too, i get exactly the same wish, and i wonder who doesn't :-)

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  15. reminds me of that coldplay song heard of it?

    Look at the stars,
    Look how they shine for you,
    And everything you do,
    Yeah they were all yellow,

    I came along
    I wrote a song for you
    And all the things you do
    And it was called yellow

    So then I took my turn
    Oh all the things I've done
    And it was all yellow
    blah blah

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI8I6qcxWyU

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  16. zuma, right now i can't listen to it, i'll do it tomorrow - just reading the words, i wonder: is this the bright yellow here or the despair yellow? probably both :-)
    actually i am not a big fan of yellow, i don't have a single piece of clothing in this colour. do you? :-)

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  17. a beautiful yes.
    love that poem.
    i'm tangled again here.

    yellow
    was one of the first words in my tiny body as a girl that i loved the power and sound and balance of.

    no despair in it for me
    though Eliot might be right about the mud stirring below it, within us.

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  18. mansuetude, thank you for responding to my yellow welcome of spring :-) - i understand your love for its sound, it is bright and clear but in a soft, balanced way. in romanian we say 'galben', which is far stronger and tougher - perhaps the blinding yellow of the sun bringing tears to one's eyes...

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  19. you know what delicious challenge your blooming blossoms are to one engrossed in greys...! :-)

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  20. ffflaneur, why don't you like colour ? is colour too vulgar for the eyes of an austere aesthete? :-)

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  21. no no no that's a huge misunderstanding!!! it's not that I do not like colours....it's just that they are so violent, so , well, challenging . (especially when they start clashing with each other! :-))

    I can only hope that, by looking again & again at your wonderful pictures, some of your deft colour-connoisseurship will rub off on me...

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  22. i understand that - the aggression - but i am torn apart between some incomprehensible longing for something like the fauvist pure colours and the subtlety of the japanese sumi-e, i think there will never be peace in me :-)

    and you humble me when you talk about my 'colour-connoisseurship', dear ffflaneur :-)

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  23. Oh I love that poem! Thank you for this post, what amazing colours, so warm and gold and glorious.
    The first two pictures look almost like paintings!

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  24. These photos are by no means boring. Very powerful in fact. Yes you're right they remind me of Corot too, and although I have a passion for bright vivid colours (as you can probably tell by looking at my blog), I also love paintings or photographs that do not use the appeal of colours but are still powerful and has strong impact.

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  25. thank you, dear Michiko! yes, i still remember the fabulous photos of flowers that you showed us, all those incredible colours :-)
    and as much as i love the sumi-e, as i have already told ffflaneur, i can't resist the appeal of the brightness a gorgeous kimono fabric displays, for ex. different feelings, longings and moods...

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  26. Just noticed I left that comment on a completely long post :p sorry!

    Yes one of the things I love about Japanese traditional arts & crafts is their vivid colours :)
    ( but then I love sumi-e too.)

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  27. yes, i noticed :-) but it is ok, since i refer in this post to a ffflaneur-post in which she mentions my 'corot'-pictures as well, so it makes sense :-)

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