Thursday, June 08, 2006

Angels in the Trees

London’s been getting me down lately so I popped off to Peckham Rye Common the other day in search of a little inspiration.

William Blake fans will recall that Peckham Common is where the young Blake famously had his ‘tree filled with angels’ vision.

So, as thousands have done before me, I hunkered down in front of a suitable looking tree in the Common and started squinting.

Nothing doing.

I tried photographing it in infra-red to see if angels generate a tell tale heat signature

Nada

Eventually, I gave up on my search for inspiration and trotted back off to Peckham proper in search of less divine subjects.

Much easier…

A sight Blake would have recognized, but he did also occasionally see angels which would have lightened his emotional load considerably.

Unlike Blake, I do however have access to Photoshop. So when I returned home I synthesized my own inspiration and posted it up onto Flickr

Someone commented underneath the photo a little later on…

The most cheerful conversation I ever had in Peckham Common was with a man who was sitting on a bench.

I approached him and said "You look great, I wish I had my camera with me,"

I sat with him for a while and he told me how you saw things differently once you had only five weeks left to live.

So yeah, feeling a bit down with London? Off to Peckham Common. A wise move.

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