minuteearth

Willows weep for my rejected thumbnail

Added 2023-09-20 14:47:03 +0000 UTC

Hi friends!

Last week we released our video about Weeping Willows and it was such a joy to make the illustrations. With every new video we get to do a little deep dive into the topic matter. In this case, I ended up taking an unreasonable amount of time thinking about a single sentence Kate wrote in the script. "in different cultures, weeping trees symbolize resilience, femininity, hope, and grief."

This sentence led me to dive into different stories about Willow trees and their cultural significance for different people. It it beautiful to see that humans all over the world look at a tree and find meaning in it.

One of my favorite stories related to the meaning of 'Resilience'. Lore goes that it has a Celtic origin in Old Ireland and Britain. Willow branches are both strong and bendy so they were used to make everything. Like houses, fences and wicker baskets. The word ‘wic’ in Old English literally means ‘to bend’. Bending, rather than breaking, under pressure can be seen as showing great 'Resilience'.
Later, when larger Christian settlements appeared, people started to refer to people who practised 'old crafts' (making wicker baskets and such) as 'Wicca', a word that now has become a synonym for pagan witchcraft.

The relationship of the Willow tree to 'grief' is more straightforward. In Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', the Willow tree stands as a barrier between land and the water. Its roots are deep into the earth, its branches touching the water's surface. Ophelia climbs the tree, crossing the barrier. Then, the branch breaks and she tumbles to her watery death - a vision that forms our image of 'grief'. (this is not a spoiler, the story is literally 400 years old)

I created one image based on some famous paintings of Ophelia, but this was a bit much for a thumbnail (boo). So I hope you enjoy it, and that you perhaps enjoyed reading about how badly I got sidetracked while illustrating this video.

And hey, if you had not seen the video yet, its here: https://youtu.be/kl0VmU4-3AQ?si=xevunqGP5DFLu2wq

x, Lizah