Footage shot with everything from iPhone to Nikon Coolpix to Canon Vixia to iMac camera.
Edited Final Cut Pro X.
Music: Public Domain (CC) – Maurice Ravel, Miroirs, V. La vallee des cloches, performed by Luis Sarro.
This episode, like VII. Vision, incorporates footage used in previous episodes. I’m finding that doing this kind of “robbing” from my own past work helps bring some coherence to the themes of this project, even if what’s been robbed is not readily perceived by the viewer. And there are some visual themes, almost like symbols used for ritual, which are emerging. Some things which are in the thick of it, or perhaps within the eye of the storm. But I won’t elaborate on those, I’ll leave that up to the viewer to decide for themselves, leave things open to interpretation.
Since this project is being developed in a glass bowl, so to speak, because I haven’t thought it all out in advance, doling out information little by little, I’m not necessarily that much ahead of my audience in terms of guessing how this will develop as time goes on. It seems like aside from parents telling their children little stories at bedtime which they make up as they go along (something I have done by the way, in the not so distant past), we don’t have a lot of that improvised creation in the modern world. There isn’t a proverbial village storyteller who people gather round and ask to make up stories on the spot. The closest thing to that is perhaps the busker, who may take a request from a passerby in hope of extra change. Improvisation is routine among jazz performers, but outside of that more formal profession, what do we have? Street performers, whose group a busker falls into.
When I lived in New York, one of the most amazing things was the amount of music in the subways by random musicians, sometimes break dancing back in the day too, at all times. These people have courage, to go out and just do their thing, with no stage to separate them from their audience, to perform out in the wide world on the same level as an ordinary person. They take their gift and blend in, play their music, sing, dance, whatever they do, as if it’s a natural thing to do – and it is a natural thing to do. Making art is a normal, natural thing to do, from the time you are a child. When it’s elevated to a “profession” it unfortunately morphs into something with a barrier between the artist and their audience, elevates them, makes them something to be worshipped like some kind of king.
I don’t feel comfortable with that way of making art, nor that way of being an artist. I want people to remember that creating is something that belongs to everyone, and everyone in their own and equally legitimate way has the ability to create. Is that idealistic of me? Perhaps. But I have children. And I remember being a child. So I know it’s something that each person is born with, for a fact.
Anyway, this has gone far afield of the making of this episode. Nevertheless, I’ll continue to create as if I am among others, improvising, and trusting my skill to keep it going that way.
Odilonvert 
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