ONE DAY, I WILL STOP CRYING

“One day, I Will Stop Crying” reflects the Buddhist concept of impermanence, just like our experiences of life mirror the changing of the sky. Some days clouds are blue, some days they are white, or purple or gold or even black, just like our lives. Everything is always changing. When we acknowledge this we will fully appreciate our experiences without them clinging to us. Some days we laugh and some days we cry. When we cry we know one day we will stop crying.  The rain is our tears. 

 

More than 1 million people have arrived in the European Union since 2015, most of them fleeing from war and terror in Syria and other countries and many risking their lives to do so. Most of them end up in refugee camps where they’re not allowed to work – they exist in an impermanent limbo waiting for what, they don’t know. They are pawns in an ever more unstable political game and their lives are prey to fluctuating forces beyond their control. Hopefully, one day, circumstances will allow them to return home and they will stop crying.

 

My intention was to create a piece that stirs the emotions on a visceral level, the background of the sky, the sounds of rain and the human voice all draw the audience in in a very basic way. Its simplicity, however, is disarming – to bring all the elements together meant digitally manipulating each frame to airbrush birds from the sky. When you consider there are 25 frames per second and it lasts 5 minutes that took a lot of work!