SnowPainter

ffasite:

From our site’s collection of Merlin photos, Colin Morgan poses as Merlin from Season 2 episode The Witch’s Quickening

Did anyone catch the legendary story tied to this shot? Nimue stole Merlin’s magic and then used it to imprison him in a tree for all eternity. I bet Colin knew that. Cheeky devil.

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So I was walking through our new Target Canada store, and I suddenly saw this.. Stopped dead. Holy sh*t! This doesn’t happen in Canada!

“I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, and tangential route for readers to reach the circus.  To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically.  I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location.  Transporting them at will.  When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn’t it?”

-Erin Morgenstern, “The Night Circus”  Part V 

AND ON THE SAME PAGE…

Our revels now are ended.  These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind.  We are such stuff

As dreams are made on: and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

-Prospero, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene I

That.. my friends is kismet!!

“Someone needs to tell those tales.  When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative.  There’s magic in that.  It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.  From the mundane to the profound.  You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose.  That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words.

-Erin Morgenstern, “The Night Circus”

* When I read this, I wondered if Ms. Morgenstern had somehow climbed into my soul and discovered that that is what the story of Merlin has done to me over these many years..

“Do you know the story of the wizard in the tree?”  she asks.

“The Merlin story?” Marco asks.  ”I know several versions.”

“There are many,” Tsukiko says with a nod.  ”Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed.  Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it.  Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment.  The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.”

-Erin Morgenstern, “The Night Circus”

“The greatest wizard in history made the mistake of sharing his secrets.  He told them to a girl.  She was young and clever and beautiful…. he told his deepest secrets to the girl, the hidden keys to all his magic..

She tricked him so that she could take his secrets and make them her own.  The wizard himself she trapped in a huge old oak tree.  And the magic she used to do so was strong, since it was the wizard’s own magic, ancient and powerful, and he could not undo it.

The wizard, on the other hand, became part of the tree.  And the tree thrived and grew, its branches spreading up to the sky, and its roots reaching farther into the earth… His tree stood long after the clever young girl was old and no longer beautiful, and he became greater and stronger than he had ever been before.”

-Erin Morgenstern “The Night Circus”

So, I saw this shot, and I thought… there are only two instances of Colin’s characters going in for a kiss on film…and then I thought about how sad and tentative he looks in both (very different circumstances though!).. and then I thought about how lovely it is that his face relaxes, and that beautiful mouth falls forward, and those unbelievable lips part… and then I had to walk away from the computer to regain control of my breathing.

Still too quiet. Here’s Merlin being quiet too. God I love this one too!