Zoned out, beading...

Where did the early night go? I'm still beading. Mantra beads, counters. Though when do I seriously meditate by counting mantra anymore? It's because I bought some lovely pink silk beading thread and am finally fixing a rose quartz necklace that broke on the street last year. Really I'm zoning out after finishing and posting another video poem, I'll call it a poem because it's about an image that carries the weight of the speaking, music and footage. Is it because I am such a private person that these videos knock me out? I wait like a worried mother hen when they're uploading, and then the deafening silence. Ah, video poetry, a fairly new and difficult form for most people. Most people prefer to read their poetry on the page. Poetry is dense and difficult and composed of compressed language and it is hard to follow a poem in a few minutes of a video, but what else are poetry readings? I've explored many ways of presenting a verbal accompaniment to visual footage. This one was a voice memo after a yoga set, still flat on my back, that I had intended to turn into a prose poem. But, hey, it wasn't 'a reading' -which is fraught with difficulties anyway, how to be the words that you speak, what do you dramatize and how, and all those questions. Ok, I'll post the video I'm talking about in this post - it's about "the wall," an image for many things, and likely we all have a "wall" of some sort in our lives. The video is a little dark, though. But I really enjoyed making it, with the storm footage, and the lights, and even found the camera shake, the hand-held quality, worked. Like brushstrokes in a painting, I guess. I sit here, tying knots between each large pink quartz crystal bead and each tiny pink white pearl, knots that will ensure if the necklace breaks, as it will, as they all do eventually, the beads won't fall over the road again. :)

The sound track is a midi file of the text that I generated at http://www.p22.com/musicfont/ and yes, I used copters, and gunshot, and a pad4choir from the music text generator (I did have to copy the sound files from the site one by one and mix them later) and ethereal sunrise, smooth clav, whirly, and nature sounds from GarageBand, plus the original track of thunder and lightning, so it is meant to be a bit, well a bit of a war zone. It works, but it's not for relaxation, obviously!

Back to quietly beading now.... :)

The video, The Wall:




(it looks better big, though, so go for fullscreen)

                              

Videopoem: The Wall

Something appropriate for this storm-filled season.


direct link: The Wall (video, words, voice, music by Brenda Clews, 2010).

It cannot be cracked, splintered, knocked down, for I've tried all this and more; it can only be burnt. Like karma, though it is not like karma because there is no cause and effect. No lesson. Rather, irrational, what we can never fully know. It sounds like glass, but it's not. There isn't anything it's like except for an impenetrable, invisible wall. There is no reason for this, none at all. Kafka's trial.

_
I typed this text into the box at the P22 Music Text Composition Generator:

the wall of resistance the impenetrable wall the wall that is invisible that is everywhere around me the wall of permanence try to imagine no wall I cannot I have lived behind this invisible wall I have flung boiling water at it I have attacked it with hammers I have attempted to pierce it with the lasers of my consciousness the wall stands tall higher than I can climb deeper than I can fall the wall is real the wall is karma the wall is what I cannot surmount I can touch the world

That's not all of the words, but it still made for a midi track longer than the recording. I did a lot of things to the midi track to make that background, which came out the way I had hoped in the end.

I meditate regularly and often do yoga sets. Especially I do this when I am working through issues. During one of my sessions last week the metaphor of the wall arose, and while resting after the yoga set I picked up my iPhone and began speaking, intending to write a prose poem from my voice notes. I left the recording as is, and added the background of sounds and instruments. My speaking of the words is not a performance but an embodiment of the meaning. Then I began to work with recent footage of a lightning storm I had shot. Initially, when looking at the rushes, I was perturbed that I hadn't removed the mesh screen. Yet the footage is perfect for this video. The subconscious is all of a processing, mobile, energy of constantly equilibrating unity, and what we are voicing here is what we are filming there. Our lives are always moving beyond their boundaries as we push into deeper processes of who we are, alone and together.

__
When I say karma, it's not that I fully believe in it either. But where there is no cause that can be discerned, it's like Fate, or Karma. And, really, you musn't try to throw karma away, or slip out of it, these don't work. Face it, and burn it. That's what you do with karma - and actually I am doing a very difficult meditation that will help with this process - you purify the essence of yourself. Fire is the most common metaphor for this - and what better than high voltage lightning. That's the set of metaphors I am working with.

But, also, surrender. Surrendering is very hard, and crucial, no other way. Surrender to your walls, the strange and irrational limitations on your life. Only then can you see them and perhaps understand why. Choice didn't get you here. It's something else, Fate, the Wheel of Fortune, the nature of life itself. How you handle it is where you have choice.

Thank goodness!

I'm not at the place where I believe all our trials and challenges are good for us - are the devastations of earthquakes and hurricanes good for us? But we do have to surrender to events however they are, mishaps or disasters, if we are to make it through with any semblance of sanity. To surrender to what is. And, there, be.

                              

The Wall, images from a videopoem

Like many, I meditate regularly and often do yoga sets. Especially I do this when I am working through issues. During one of my sessions last week the metaphor of the wall arose, and while resting after the yoga set I picked up my iPhone and began speaking, intending to write a prose poem from my voice notes. I left the recording as is, and added the background of sounds and instruments. My speaking of the words is not a performance but an embodiment of the meaning. Then I began to work with recent footage of a lightning storm I had shot. Initially, when looking at the rushes, I was perturbed that I hadn't removed the mesh screen. Yet the footage is perfect for this video. The subconscious is all of a processing, mobile, energy of constantly equilibrating unity, and what we are voicing here is what we are filming there. Our lives are always moving beyond their boundaries as we push into deeper processes of who we are, alone and together.