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rfmcdonaldYesterday was a glorious spring day in Toronto. I was out early in the morning to do my laundry, and was walking around my neighbourhood. The warmth was glorious, as was the return of life, but the sky stood out. It was perfect, cloudless, what I called on Instagram and Twitter a "Derek Jarman blue".
Derek Jarman's last film was the 1993 Blue, completed as he was dying of HIV/AIDS. Visually, the film was a constant blue, "International Klein Blue", a manifestation on film the deterioration of filmmaker Jarman's sight worn away by cytomegalovirus.
The words, spoken by actors including Jarman himself and the later-famous Tilda Swinton, are beautiful poetry, preserved at the website of the Queer Cultural Centre.
Jarman has appeared on A Bit More Detail before: he manifested in a 2006 post looking at a poetic passage from Terry Eagleton's script for Jarman's Wittgenstein; a 2009 celebration of the video for Annie Lennox's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", to which he contributed; a somewhat silly 2010 meditation on a photo that did not quite turn out; a <ahref="https://abitmoredetail.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/photo-purchased-at-word-on-the-street-toronto/">2014 celebration of a Derek Jarman biography I bought at Word on the Street. (The Ke$ha book also photographed there was extra, free.)
I like the poetry of Jarman, his art. His life is also a wonderful example of struggle and survival despite everything. Yesterday morning, his blue mattered particularly to me. It was a hard winter, and I'm glad to be rid of it, and more glad to have proof of it.
Derek Jarman's last film was the 1993 Blue, completed as he was dying of HIV/AIDS. Visually, the film was a constant blue, "International Klein Blue", a manifestation on film the deterioration of filmmaker Jarman's sight worn away by cytomegalovirus.
The words, spoken by actors including Jarman himself and the later-famous Tilda Swinton, are beautiful poetry, preserved at the website of the Queer Cultural Centre.
Blue Bottle buzzing
Lazy days
The sky blue butterfly
Sways on the cornflower
Lost in the warmth
Of the blue heat haze
Singing the blues
Quiet and slowly
Blue of my heart
Blue of my dreams
Slow blue love
Of delphinium days
Blue is the universal love in which man bathes - it is the terrestrial paradise.
Jarman has appeared on A Bit More Detail before: he manifested in a 2006 post looking at a poetic passage from Terry Eagleton's script for Jarman's Wittgenstein; a 2009 celebration of the video for Annie Lennox's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", to which he contributed; a somewhat silly 2010 meditation on a photo that did not quite turn out; a <ahref="https://abitmoredetail.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/photo-purchased-at-word-on-the-street-toronto/">2014 celebration of a Derek Jarman biography I bought at Word on the Street. (The Ke$ha book also photographed there was extra, free.)
I like the poetry of Jarman, his art. His life is also a wonderful example of struggle and survival despite everything. Yesterday morning, his blue mattered particularly to me. It was a hard winter, and I'm glad to be rid of it, and more glad to have proof of it.
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