Because the night ...

 

Because the night …

Some of my work deals with juxtapositions of this world ... this afternoon post processing photos from my latest trip to Zambia this became apparent to me ... Patti Smith sang of "Because the Night (Belongs to Lovers)" In Africa the night belongs to ... predators and scavengers. Sometimes, for some, the distinctions separating the three are very fine and blurred https://youtu.be/c_BcivBprM0?si=ICi7Ec0mfppi4Wpf

 

The connection is not really between a song, a film, and two wildlife photographs. The connection is between three different expressions of the same ancient truth: that darkness reveals what the daylight conceals.

The photographs already carry that tension. The leopard emerges from shadow, deliberate and beautiful, a creature whose existence depends upon remaining unseen. The hyena feeds amidst the debris of another animal's life, often dismissed as a scavenger despite being an accomplished predator in its own right. Between them lies a boundary that is less certain than many would like to believe. Predator. Scavenger. Opportunist. The categories are convenient, but nature rarely concerns itself with our need for clear distinctions.

Patti Smith's Because the Night is usually interpreted as a celebration of romantic longing. Night belongs to lovers because darkness strips away convention, exposing desires and instincts that daylight keeps restrained. Yet the line takes on an entirely different meaning when viewed through an African lens. The night does not belong to lovers. It belongs to those who hunt, those who flee, and those who wait. It belongs to leopards moving silently through dry grass, to hyenas listening in the darkness, and to countless creatures whose lives unfold beyond the reach of human sight.

Watching the photographs after listening to Patti Smith's voice, I found myself unexpectedly thinking of Cat People (1982). The film explores the uneasy boundary between civilization and instinct, suggesting that beneath the veneer of culture there remains something older, wilder, and impossible to fully suppress. Its central question is not whether humans are different from predators, but how thin the separation truly is.

That same ambiguity exists in the African night. The leopard is admired for its grace and beauty, the hyena often judged for feeding upon the remains of another's kill. Yet both are participating in the same ancient economy where life sustains life. The distinction is largely one of perception. One wears the mantle of nobility; the other bears the burden of reputation. Nature remains indifferent to both.

Perhaps that is the subconscious thread connecting Patti Smith, Cat People, and these photographs. Each challenges the stories we tell ourselves about identity. Lover and predator. Hunter and scavenger. Civilization and instinct. They appear to occupy separate worlds until examined closely, where their boundaries begin to dissolve.

In the end, the African night belongs to none of them exclusively. It belongs to transformation itself. In darkness, roles shift, masks fall away, and the categories by which we organize the world reveal themselves to be provisional. The leopard, the hyena, the lover, and perhaps even the photographer are all participants in the same timeless drama, moving through the shadows between what they are and what they believe themselves to be.

Themes that I have addressed in my recent writings about myth and symbolism are not about creating meaning but rather about discovering it. The connection was already there. The photographs simply revealed it.