Through the Years

Through the Years

A popular type of album at Facebook - so I composed one too. The photos are optimized for web viewing - Facebook re-sizes all images to minuscule KBs (no idea where all these photos are on my hard drive :)).

Click through to Picasa to read the inscriptions (or click on any photo, it'll take you through).

                                          

Niagara Falls

click for larger size

A beautiful friend who I hadn't seen in almost 10 years treated me to a magnificent few days at Niagara Falls. These photos are stills from video I took. They are a lovely memory of the thundering waters.

Click on any photo in the slideshow to go directly to the album to see the photos in larger size, and to read the captions.

The first videopoem of the footage from Niagara Falls has been released; you can watch it at YouTube: 'Tones of Noir' (1:23min).

                                             

A Videopoem: Tones of Noir

direct link: Tones of Noir
music: Alex Bailey, 'Piano Improvisation No 7.'

Do poems wait to be born? A poem whittled out of thundering mist at Niagara Falls. The roar of the Falls, music, voice.


I wanted the voice to be as light as the mist, and as strange as a dream with noir elements. (Don't worry if you can't hear all the words -it's meant to be a bit ghostly, and you can read the words here.)

Tones of Noir

Numinosity
     washes the sky.

Poems rise
     out of thundering mist.

I think it is a crime.

She rushes by.

The water, 
     the power in falling.

Begin when it's in motion
and stop before it ends.

Mystical crystal spikes
     of sun.

He waits.

We walk quickly
covering ourselves against the watcher.

_
Video I shot in Niagara Falls, Canada, a few days ago, edited in Final Cut Express, Video I shot in Niagara Falls, Canada, a few days ago, edited in Final Cut Express, and layered a few recordings of the poem I wrote for this piece.

Niagara Falls is magnificent!


Still from video:



_
I'm entering this in Big Tent Poetry's prompt this week. I read the prompt Wednesday night (had only 6 hours sleep since then, video poetry does that to me, sigh) and thought, hmnnn, enough? ...maybe.

::Smiling:: Thanks!



                                          

Videopoem-in-progress: Niagara Falls, First Project

A friend treated me to a trip to Niagara Falls- so beautiful! I took some footage. I started on something last night, and this is the little video in process. I decided to try some parallel editing with the clip. I'm uploading the video before I add a poem and music - which I haven't written or looked for yet. Blogger now offers video again, so it's a good place to post works-in-progress (in hugely decreased size) before the final upload to YouTube (which doesn't allow edits in the same url spot). I find seeing a video I'm working on online helps me to figure out what needs to be done or where it should go - and I like sharing the process of making something, too.

I'd like something slightly noir in this videopoem, but so far no images have come. So I search through sites, music, films for a hook, something that will unravel a poem.

Not that I believe poems lie in wait to be born, but already this one is forming itself in the footage and I have to whittle it out of the thundering mist.

The Falls are magnificent, though the town of Niagara has become, with casinos, haunted houses and wax museums everywhere, the Las Vegas of Canada - in a quaintly Canadian way.



Videopoem-in-progress: Niagara Falls, First Project from Brenda Clews on Vimeo.

Because I initially tried to upload a file too large for Blogger's service, and it didn't take, I turned to Vimeo. Though I later figured out my error with Blogger's file size limits, Vimeo certainly offers a better resolution.




Still from the video. As a filter lady, yes, I did add a little something. Not telling what though! ::Smiling::

_
Later, nah, I'm not a gangsta writer, but noir, or neo-noir, can be a mood, a tone:

Tones of Noir

Numinosity
     washes the sky.

Poems rise
     out of thundering mist.

I think it is a crime.

She rushes by.

The water, 
     the power in falling.

Begin when it's in motion
and stop before it ends.

Mystical crystal spikes
     of sun.

He waits.

We walk quickly
covering ourselves against the watcher.