Aaron Tsuru –  just you and me feat. Lorelei (2015)

There’s this marvelous @reverendbobbyanger quote from one of his Sunday Posts a year or so ago:

There is more than finding the right light to shoot in. You must find
the people with the right light in them.

He’s absolutely correct. That’s always the first step. But a think a indispensable second step follows implicitly given that first step.

I remember being told once that the Sanskrit word ‘namaste’ translates to something like the light in me sees and acknowledges the light in you.

It’s not enough to find the right light in someone else–you must also find that right light in yourself.

Whether it was Hemingway or Leonard Cohen who said it first or best, it’s still true: the broken parts are where the light gets inside.

Or to borrow a monologue from the film with the best color cinematography of all time that was subsequently appropriated by Texas post-rockers Explosions in the Sky:

This great evil – where’s it come from?
How’d it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who’s doing this?
Who’s killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we mighta known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?

If you’re curious what it looks like when someone has passed through this night is seen by someone who has also passed through similar nights: it looks like this. Exactly like this.