Not In A Black Mood

Redemption. That feels like a heavy topic. Heavy concept.

There’s all that religious baggage.

More relevant, more current, more universal, there’s Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’: ‘Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.’

Lying here, I can still hear Marley’s singing in my mind. No, not an irritation, not an ‘earworm’. It’s a good – no, a great song to have lodged in your head.

I guess you’re like me. Sometimes a song or tune, maybe sometimes just a lyric, gets lodged.

xxxxxx

An oddly-for-the-time-of-year warm day. Sitting outside eating lunch. A few yards away – birds. The frantic hunt for food, the competition for sustenance, the striving for a mate.

My frame of mind at the time led me to find it all predictable and fundamentally ugly.

Redemption came with the pleasure afforded by a blackbird’s arrival; both its appearance and its song.

And from that, to Marley, to lying here. ‘None but ourselves can free our minds.’ I have nothing to add.

Not In A Black Mood

I never associate black with the negative. I never say ‘I’m in a black mood’ or similar.

I veer by default to black’s simple purity. I consciously value the clarity afforded by black and white.

(The greys in between may – or may not – have their own meanings.)

Good grief. It’s even true that the blackbird is my favourite garden animal. And that’s with their imperfections.

It seems a strange thing to say, but I rarely think in colour. But – cognitive dissonance alert – I often wish our north European world was more colourful. Our buildings, our clothes … our artifacts. And, not literally, our outlook too? Perhaps. Probably.