I'm a huge fan of Tilda Swinton! Did you see Tilda Stardust? I just found this brilliant speech that she gave last year when accepting a Rothko Chapel Visionary Award at the The Rothko Chapel in Texas.
Illustration by Kato©
Her entire speech is over at ConnorHabib's Blog and it is beautiful and inspirational. As a film maker this passage really resonates to me:
It occurs to me on a regular basis that the cinema carries the potential to be perhaps the most humane of all gestures in art: the invitation to place ourselves, under the intimate cover of darkness, into another person’s shoes, behind another set of eyes, into another’s consciousness. The ultimate compassion machine, the empathy engine.
Here is the darkness.
Here comes the light.
Leading into talking about the death of her mother she continues:
We know what threatens our humanity the most; we shouldn’t need reminding.
The capacity to project our own shadow onto others, to edit our understanding of our own frailty, to hold it at bay, to play tag with our vulnerabilities. You’re It, don’t touch me. Our attachment to an idea of malevolent foreignness, of malign darkness: this is our Kryptonite… we know this well.
This section near the end reminds me of a favorite Foucault quote that I have used in my own work:
…Light and Dark both at once.
Welcome to the age of reason, welcome to life.
…Wherever you are alone with yourself most will show in that magic mirror. And bear your heart witness, and keep you company whenever you need to draw on it.
We come. We take it home with us. We never really leave.
Beautiful, inspiring words on a beautiful Thursday!