The Blue Flower
Photo Essay by Philipp Aldrup  //  Singapore/Germany  September 2018
Voice and sound composition by Vivian Wang


As part of Philipp Aldrup's photographic series TIDAL POOLS - GEZEITENTÜMPEL and the poem THE BLUE FLOWER - DIE BLAUE BLUME.

Words:

now I am lying in a circle of stones at the vale’s very end;
a coiled sleeping animal

sounds of a restless roach, a nervous shiver
thoughts surface, disquieting and exhilarating
the debris is not sinking into the earth
but slowly rising towards a stone-filled sky

an eternity passes
this night her leathery skin still glistens with
life she is buried within herself

how many people died to make us possible?
(more than you can forget)
how did they kill time before it was invented?

one day we would stand together
our eyes travelling over wide velds
far past where the village was
towards the invisible, where it will be again
a village...two villages...
the old path through the marsh

a million canyons’ worth of earth have been removed
down here the sea ground is scattered with the tools of ancient hunters
who raised our parents and the parents of our children
soon we will be like them
bones lime stone cement

if I were mud, I would rise as a monster
you are not of this world, but of a world to come
the flower is blue, your eyes are blue. blue is the flower
we crawl into the sewer pipe
life will never be the same

Film and text reproduced here, courtesy of Philipp Aldrup: www.philipp-aldrup.com