Psalm 1:1
watch your butt
Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence. (Psalm 1:1 DR)
There is something strangely definitive about the simple act of sitting. We do it so often in so many situations, yet rarely think too much of it. However, in the act we can understand a sort of proxy for our will, for where we choose to sit is where we choose to be.
When you are standing there is a certain potential for change as as if a final decision hasn’t been made yet. But sitting has a finality that standing doesn’t. When standing it’s implied that you are in the process of determination; you can stay or you can go. But sitting implies that the die has been cast; it is no longer a matter of choosing one direction or another. A choice has been made, and requires more effort to change by the very banal reality of gravity.
The sins we strive against have a certain gravitational pull to them as well. We all face temptation, and sometimes we end up standing quite near them. While imprudent, there is a still an opportunity to leave. But when we succumb, we in effect take our seat with them, which are often very comfortable and more difficult to leave.
St. Augustine sees in this inaugural verse of the Psalms a schema of the distinction between the righteous and the wicked.
The sinner begins by walking in the counsel of the ungodly, which he understands as drawing away from God. He then stands in the way of sinners, which is not merely falling into temptation through weakness (such as drawing away from God) but actually taking delight in the sin itself. The final step is to sit in the chair of pestilence, which is to be confirmed in that sin through pride. One does not only delight in the sin, but begins to see it as something one one deserves to take delight in.
In this scenario the sinner is incapable of returning to God unless set free by Him, who neither has gone away in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence.
For St. Augustine the Psalms ultimately point to Christ and are about Him, and thus in this first Psalm the blessed man is the Godman himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The seat of pestilence, while about pride generally speaking, has for St. Augustine a more specific referent, that of hurtful doctrine. He sees the word pestilence as indicating the quality of spreading far and wide, and while pride is certainly a universal reality in human experience, hurtful doctrine has more of this character of spreading, which is why good doctrine is so important, and why we must be careful where we choose to sit.
For this .gif I wanted to work with this idea of a spreading pestilence, but I also decided to go a bit more literal. I found this great image of a decaying chair and composited a book onto it. From there I drew some simple mask shapes to matte the pestilential substance flowing from the book, having it pool down below.
The movement of the substance was a great plugin called LoopFlow, which creates these great movements that can loop. You basically draw a couple mask paths to indicate the movement, link those masks up to the properties in the effects panel, and then set some parameters. You can obviously see the loop point with the fade, but it importantly allows for some warping and looping which can take forever to accomplish otherwise.
For the little dots I just drew some stroked lines, set the lines to be dashed and then animated the offset. I added some bobbing spores (or something!) for compositional balance and then some matted textures in the top to balance it out.
Enjoy.
Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence. (Psalm 1:1 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: