This weeks challenge from the Lens-Artists asks:
These days, everyone’s talking about and hopefully practicing “Social Distancing”. Since it’s something we should all be doing, we thought a challenge focused on DISTANCE might be an appropriate reminder of its importance. For today’s quotes I’ve chosen lines from Bette Midler’s 1990 Grammy-winning release “From A Distance”. Although the song is often attributed to Ms. Midler, who made it famous, it was actually written by Julie Gold.
So firstly thank you for not distancing yourself from my blog posts 🙂
I thought for this post I would just use a simple panoramic landscape shot, however as I edited the photos, it became so much more in my mind.
This shot taken last year in April, shows the Druids circle near Penmaenmawr, it is taken from a distance, and in the near distance we see a burial chamber, and further away glorious Welsh hills.
However this became not the only distances I was thinking about, the subject matter of the photo is of an ancient past, lost to us in the distant past, who were the people that built such structures, why did they build them, and were their thought processes so very distant from ours? Our best guesses are they are to do with the cyclical nature of the seasons, for ritual, for communication with the sacred and profane, tied up with boundaries. of life and of death. All these things tied into the need to survive, the need for hope, the need to believe.
Survival, hope and boundaries, at this time are we closer to our ancestors than ever?
Yet there is also a nearer temporal distance, it now feels so long since this event happened, the world appears to have shifted beneath my feet in such a short space of time, this was only 11 months ago, I like so many others find my self wondering how did this all happen?
And still there is the physical distance to this place, it is about 180 miles from where I currently live, and my father lives relatively nearer at only 30 miles, and thus lives a fair distance away from me. Never before has this distance felt so great, so far, so troubling. At this current time this distance fills my thoughts on a regular basis.
And then we come to the last portion of time we must address – that which lies ahead of us, we will get there, it may seem a great distance away from where we are now, but one day, in the not too distant future I will be walking this coastline, these hills, and amongst these stones again.
And for the present I can #stayingin and look at photos, close my eyes and imagine.
This one is a rather large 9 photo stitched panorama so clicking on the photo below links to a better image.
‘Distant lands, distant times’, Penmaenmawr, 2019.
Wishing you all the very best, take care and stay well.
Ken
