Did she let it go?

Image of graffiti art by famous/infamous/anonymous
well-known/unknown artist, Banksy.
London's South Bank, 2002.

"... what if you walked by this wall, where Banksy has been? Would you call it trash? Would it feather-tickle some old piece of brain that has been left monument-crumbling in your skull? Did she let it go? Did it disappear? (Are we always here?) Is she waving goodbye, or is she reaching for the string, maintaining that the gesture is the same, and the lie is in the atmosphere." 

~ Rikki and Holly of the blog, Seamstress for the Band

See the rest of their post here. For more thoughts on red balloons, see here. Or here. Or even here.

on the string of a single red balloon....

Liza Temnikova plays the character Lyubov in the Sochi Olympics
Opening Ceremony. 7 February 2014
Photo by Petr David Joseki, Associated Press.

Photo by Patrick Semansky.

When I was a kid, we were shown at school the Oscar-winning French film The Red Balloon. I don't remember much about it, except that there was little (if any) dialogue, and the red balloon seemed to be more than a prop; it was a character. It followed a little boy around in the streets of Paris.

Apparently -- though I don't remember this part -- in the end, the red balloon was attacked and destroyed, but many other balloons came to the boy, and took him on a flight over the city. Flight as an image of transcendence. 

A key image (for me) in the Sochi Olympics Opening Ceremony last night was one of a small girl -- Lyubov -- who walks through many of the disparate scenes of the show, finally rising above the world on the string of a single red balloon. 

But then she lets it go.

1956 Oscar-winning short film, The Red Balloon.

For more thoughts on red balloons.... See here. Or here. Or even here.