In 1962, the song "Me and My Shadow" seemingly enjoyed a renaissance. I say "seemingly" because that's the way I remember it. I was only four at the time, and the first time I saw it performed on tv, I thought it was a new song. That's the way it is when you are very young; each new encounter is a reinvention of the world.
In fact, the song was written in 1927, if Wikipedia is to be believed, by Al Jolson, Billy Rose, and Dave Dreyer. It's been performed by a host of artists since. In 1962, it seemed, it was performed all over television on every variety show--and variety shows were big back then.
There's just one thing. I can find no proof of this phenomenon. I don't know that it ever actually happened. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.
Except, except
--for a memorable rendition by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., which you will find at the end of this post. A performance of such grace and easy charm that I'm certain it must have been repeated on at least two or three different variety shows. But two or three does not a renaissance make.
Why then do I remember it as making such a splash? Could it be that it was the first time I was ever faced with, ever really thought about my own shadow, as a separate entity apart from me?
(Well, maybe not. After all, the Disney version of Peter Pan, with its memorable scene of Pan chasing his shadow, came out in 1953. And the Broadway play with Mary Martin aired on tv in 1960. But I wasn't around in '53, and wasn't old enough for its first re-release in '58. I must have caught the Disney on its third go-round in '69. I probably caught Mary Martin's rebroadcast in '63.)
Well, what is the shadow, besides proof of our defiance of the sunlight, saying to the photons "thus far and no further?" I mean, what meaning do we assign to it? Well, she's Nyx, the goddess of darkness, sister of Erebus, the god of night. A presence that is an absence.
What was it to me, my shadow at that age? I can take a guess. Tall in the evening, a glimpse of the future. Crouching in my protection at noontide, reminding me of the shortcomings of the present. My own portable sundial. A cool, companionable blue parasol in the mornings that the afternoons chased away. A friend to confide in as darkness approached. A terror among the streetlights. A shape-changer.
Of course the shadow is one of Jung's crowd of archetypes. It stands alongside the ego, the self. He saw the shadow as literally our dark side, all the failures and foibles we don't want to own up to, want to dismiss and for that very reason must make peace with. We have to clap for the wolfman. The wolfman is, after all, our animal energy, our unbounded creative impulse. We cannot be a fully integrated person if we deny the person that we are at every full moon. There is no soul without a body, no yin without a yang.
As Jung puts it: "Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." Take your shadow to lunch today.
"The shadow is the man's thwarted selfishness, his unadmitted desires, the swear words he never spoke, the murders he didn't commit. The shadow is the dark side of his soul, the unadmitted, the inadmissible."
There's a wonderful novel by Lord Dunsny called The Charwoman's Shadow. In it a young man is sent to a magician to learn how to turn lead into gold. The magician agrees, but he has a price: the young man's shadow. He promises instead an erzatz shadow. The young man soon comes to regret the bargain when he learns the shadow does not shrink or grow at noon or twilight. He cannot go among others, who are horrified by his uncanny new shadow. At last he is able to free the shadow from the box in which it has been imprisoned, and there is this lovely passage:
The fatigue of the night and his dread had fallen away and he danced in sheer joy, and a wildness and fantasy about his leaping shadow seemed to show that it also had a joy of its own. As he watched its silent leapings following his merry steps, he began to understand how a soul might follow a shadow, as here on the solid Earth a shadow followed heels.
What's this all got to do with today, Groundhog Day? The day has its roots in German tradition, with badgers or bears, hibernating animals. If the badger saw its shadow, it meant it was a clear, sunny day--which conversely, according to weather wisdom, portended that winter would be long. But I'd like to turn that on its head. If you see your shadow, my fellow groundhogs, it means clear sunny skies, even in winter. It's Imbolc, cross-quarter day. You already knew there were six more weeks till spring at any rate. Embrace your shadow, your personal winter. There is no shadow without sun.
Happy Shadow Day!
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