The ground cools my bare arms, my bare legs, my bare neck, which glow with a radiant warmth given by an afternoon of sun shone directly onto my skin. My eyes are closed but I can feel the moonlight press down upon the lids, drawing my eyelashes inward, toward dreams of stars projected by my brain. A midnight breeze rolls lightly through the curls in my hair, falls over my forehead, kisses my lips, ruffles my shirt. An engine grumbles past, coughing along the pavement, malcontent and impatient.
I hear a voice.
The voice is a presence of indeterminate origin, but whether it comes from within or without, from now or beyond, above or below, it is familiar. The voice is made of words I know, ideas I recognize, dreams I have had, desires I understand. This voice is my heart, this voice is my brother, this voice is myself, this voice is the voice, speaking the only words that can be spoken. The voice is a lullaby, but I do not fall asleep. This voice is a lullaby that awakens me from a dream and draws me further into this moment. I am the branches above me, and the sky above the branches, and the stars above the sky, and the possibility beyond the stars.
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I think this is a great sensory essay but I'm having a hard time seeing visuals for it. I'm sure you have your own Ideas but i was kind of confused with the way it tied to the storyboard. I think with such little visual content, you should experiment a lot with sound. Especially set out in the wilderness, you can get a lot of great sounds. And the execution of the "voice" calling you should be place in high importance with regard to the sounds of nature. It may even be interesting for the sounds of the outside to build up louder and louder and then cease when you hear the voice.
ReplyDeleteI am a fan of the abstract-ness of this essay, it is very poetic. I think it might be difficult to transfer to video though. I totally agree with Kassey on experimenting with sound, but I think you can also really experiment with the visuals. Your manifesto has a very abstract "we" approach and I think this essay also has a kind of abstracted "we" feeling. It's almost like the reader is experiencing the memory instead of the writer, or the subject of the story.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as if you are retelling snippets of many memories. I can see this work out for your movie, especially considering how, over time, memories we have, no matter how small, can combine to retell a whole series of events.
ReplyDeleteWhen making your movie, think about the different sounds you can have. I agree with Kassey and Natalie, that sound in this movie is paramount. The visual content you choose and the pacing of the sounds can create rich expierences where the viewer takes many different fragments, and pieces them together to create their own retelling of events in your life.
Try detaling sounds as well as visuals in your storyboards. Making the viewer an active participant in retelling your memories would respect the content of your manifesto.
I dont think it will be too terribly difficult putting the things you've written about onto the screen. It can be done, the question is how. What will you show? How will it really relate to the writing? Are we going to see a starry night, literally? Or will an iconographic or symbolic representation work better? These are all things i urge you to consider, yet i'm willing to bet you have already.
ReplyDeleteI like the feel going on here, it is Whitman-like and optimistic. I'm excited to see the outcome.