I find this time of the year challenging, because there is less color and less light where I live (in the northeast United States).
During this time of the year, I need to work harder to keep fear, sadness, worry, regret, and other “negative” feelings at bay.
How do I do that? By
- naming the experience, here and elsewhere,
- helping others to do their own healing work,
- recognizing human “cognitive distortions” and challenging them with antidotes for those unhelpful and automatic thoughts,
- bringing color and light into every moment, as much as possible.
Last night, on my walk to my car after work in the cold and the dark, I heard this song from the album Color and Light: Jazz Sketches on Sondheim.
(“Loving You” from Stephen Sondheim‘s Sunday in the Park with George — a musical about George Seurat who painted with color and light — performed with light and color by Nancy Wilson, Peabo Bryson, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade, and found here on lightly colorful and colorfully light YouTube.)
That parenthetical statement above isn’t exactly light on information.*
Here are some images of color (and black and white) and light (and dark) I was able to capture yesterday:
Before I leave for another day of colors, blacks, whites, grays, light, and darkness, I wished to share with you the title tune from Color and Light, performed by Herbie Hancock … but it’s not on YouTube. So, instead, here’s another tune from that album, “They Ask Me Why I Believe in You“ — from an unproduced 1956 television play I Believe in You — as performed on the piano by Mr. Hancock and Stephen Sondheim himself:
which you can find here, on YouTube.
If you click on this link, you’ll see a surprisingly long list of unproduced projects by the very talented and successful Stephen Sondheim.
What does that tell me? That he’s had some challenging times, too.
Thanks to all the human beings and cats that contributed to the creation of this post and to you — of course! — for all the color and light you perceive and bring, here and now.
* That paragraph is also light on the facts, people. I don’t know what I was thinking! “Loving You” is from the Sondheim musical Passion, based on one of my favorite films, Passione d’Amore. The song “Color and Light” is from Sunday in the Park with George. I apologize for the confusing and obscuring colors and lights.