Light Power 3-fer

Posted by J on Aug 16, 2012 in J Posts | 5 comments

Three moments to share from today about the profound impact of LIGHT.

We woke before sunrise today to secure tickets to one of the world’s few remaining Paleolithic cave painting sites still open to the public. “Paleolithic” sort of means “super old,” like older than 15-thousand years. “Few remaining” sort of means “arrive two hours before opening at this place where every tourist within 50 miles wants to go and join the mosh pit when a small window opens to sell the day’s only 50 available tickets.”

The cave experience was mesmerizing, and not just because we secured tickets. There we were, staring at images painted by human hands over 15-thousand years ago. Original drawings of bison and reindeer were just inches away. One image showed a reindeer licking the head of another reindeer bowing at its feet. The proportions were all accurate. The lines were drawn — planned out — by what appeared to be master artists. The cave walls and arches COVERED with image after image, herds of animals.

Our tour guide (Jean Marie, pictured with us below) showed us how the cave artists used the contours of the cave wall in their drawings. This line of the cave is a bison’s shoulder. This gap forms a stomach. An antler. A mouth.

Jean Marie also described how these images were viewed — NOT with flashlights and electric lights as today … but with torches, light sources that flickered, moved, lights that played with the lines and shadows of the wall. Turns out the cave artists USED those torch lights to make their creations “come alive.”

He showed us how it might work with a red flashlight. The images did come alive. And it was astonishingly beautiful.

Then, after a spirited game of Fictionary after dinner … we noticed that a sunset had broken through the stormy evening … and a rainbow appeared on the horizon, right where the sun had come up hours earlier.

Then, just before midnight — and I am not making this up — fireworks appeared in the sky over the Dordogne Valley. In the picture below, you can just make out the outline of “our” nearby chateau in the bottom left corner.