Brief 1 Part 2 - Response to Student Submissions

Link to the video I am responding to: https://vimeo.com/282659852

This short film prompted my memories of a particular feeling. I have felt it a few times in my life, but not often. It’s saved for the most unexpectedly happy occasions — times when everything feels simple.

My chest feels light and tingly. The usual weight of my body and mind — the tension in my shoulders and coiled around my spine, the ticking of my mind as it evaluates its present anxieties — is gone, not a flicker of it in my consciousness.

It feels like I could float off the edge of the earth at any time, despite being firmly detained by gravity.

I felt it when I was 11 years old. I lay on the floor of my lounge room, my back flat against the carpet and limbs sprawled out. The room was dark, save for the twinkling of the string of rainbow Christmas lights I had just hung around the border of our front window. It was December 1^st. I watched the lights in awe as they changed patterns—alternating blue and yellow then green and red, then all flashing wildly at once—my own aurora borealis. Despite their constant movements, everything else in the room was still and silent. I was pleasantly alone.

I felt it when I was 13 years old. On my birthday, I sat at the dining table, cutting slices of Freddo Frog ice-cream cake and passing them to my family members: one for my mum, one for my Nona and one for each of my two older sisters. This was the same ice-cream birthday cake that my mum bought me from the supermarket every year, but I appreciated it more this time than any other. The layers of white, pink and green ice-cream with cheap-tasting rainbow sprinkles on top were comforting . My family was sitting at the table, happily talking and eating cake. They were all here for me and no one was fighting.

I felt it when I was 18 years old. I sat cross-legged on a deck chair on the balcony of a hotel room in Coolangatta, talking to my boyfriend about anything that came to mind. I wore nothing but a bikini but the night air blanketed my exposed skin in both humidity and privacy. Flying foxes flew above us, their wings making swooping and flapping noises as they passed by. A flock of lorikeets nestled in the trees across the street, adorning the branches like brightly coloured Christmas ornaments. Having just graduated from high school and being far away from everything that I knew made everything feel uncomplicated and limitless.

This short film made me wonder how the dancer felt as she floated around the frame. Did she feel light and happiness in that moment? Or was it purely a performance?