Peach Sunday Decadence

I know, I’m really rather useless at blogging, seeing as I so routinely fail to remember to actually do it. In my defence I did have to change the name of my comic and get two comics off to the printers this week. Fingers crossed that Ka-Blam will actually deliver them in time for Bristol!

So, anyway, it was my turn to post the picture on Elephant Words and, seeing as my lovely girlfriend is a photographer, I asked her if I could use one of her pictures…and, to make things even easier for myself I asked her to suggest which picture I should choose. She picked out the picture above, Peach Sunday Decadence. So, naturally, for most of the next week I scratched my head and pondered what I should write as all the other Elephant Words contributors posted excellent stories.

However, before I move on to talking about what I actually did write, and why I wrote it, why don’t you pop over to Elephant Words and actually read it: Peach Sunday Decadence.

Right, that done, where were we…? Oh yes, I was scratching my head about what to write. You see, the problem I was having is that looking at the picture all I could see was the very beautiful woman I happen to be in love with. So…a love poem? A piece about how stunningly beautiful she is? I wasn’t drawing a blank, I was full of ideas…but none of them seemed satisfying. They all seemed rather self indulgent. It wasn’t until I was talking to Ashley about one of the other stories based on the picture, and she mentioned that it had come close to the actual meaning of the picture, that it clicked with me – when she looks at the picture, she sees something else.

At that point the story just fell into place easily. The theme would be how our perceptions of ourselves differ from others’ perceptions of us. It was clear to me that the balloon wasn’t there by chance, that was how she perceived herself. The balloon not only represents her self image, it almost stands in for her here. She’s hiding behind it. But just like the boyfriend in the story, I couldn’t see that, all I could see was the beautiful woman who takes my breath away.

So, while the girl in the story is not Ashley, and the guy in the story isn’t me, in some ways they are. It’s not autobiographical at all, but it does explore the differences between how I see her and how she sees herself.

Now it’s Thursday and it’s my turn to write another story for Elephant Words tomorrow. I’ll aim to blog about it a little more quickly this time!