- The voice
- Silent, and heavy-lidded
- Home
- The Luna LagunaWhere the lake stops being a lake — the first warm water, and the moon in it before you look up
- Part of
- Sleep namesA character per sleep word, so the word is learnt without being taught.
The story of The Still Heron
Everything else in this world is going to sleep. The Still Heron has already arrived, and he is wide awake. He stands alone along the edge of the Luna Laguna, further along from the raft, on one long leg, neck folded into a deep S and sunk right down into his shoulders so his head sits almost on his chest. Cool chalky blue-grey, paler at the breast — the coolest thing in a warm picture. His bill is long and straight and level, never raised, never open, never pointed at the water. His eyes are open and heavy-lidded and looking at nothing in particular. A heron is the stillest animal there is. It will stand without moving for an hour at a time, and that is not patience and it is not effort — it is simply what it does. Which makes him the only one here who demonstrates stillness without being asleep, and that is a different lesson from all the others. It is the parent’s lesson, really: you do not have to be asleep to be still. Every other character has one motion. He has none. Not once, in any film. The only thing he is ever permitted to do is blink, slowly, once, right at the end. He is the cheapest thing in the whole production and the hardest to get right, because stillness only reads if everything around it is moving very slightly.