Upon Video Review


If I could write a song, I would write it about driving Highway 2 between Edmonton and Calgary. It's got it all: changing landscapes, big sky, destination, home, going, returning, pavement, signs, weather, memory, longing.

But I don't write songs.

What I do enjoy doing, though, is making movies/on location. That keeps the cost down. What I see is the video, what I hear on the radio is the audio. I look for unexpected harmony as they combine.

We drove back from Calgary yesterday afternoon. As I woke up from a quick nap and opened my eyes to the highway vista, I heard on CKUA a Woody Guthrie song sung and put to music by Jay Farrar. It's a beautiful song.

Don't let anything knock your props out from under you/
Always keep your mind clear/
Let your plans come out of mistakes.


The audio was added later, and I have to steady the shot, but it's a fun, little project that makes you appreciate art seen and heard.

We miss so much that we see and hear the first time through. We miss so much when we look down. What a waste!

What's the most dramatic part of a drive home up Highway 2?

The sky.

Whatever you do and wherever you go/
Don't lose your grip on life, and that means/
Don't let any earthly calamity/
Knock your dreamer and your hoping machine/
Out of order.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughed ab
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit
Read more