Am I really signing up to go through the pains of the creative process while I'm stressed out
during a pandemic? Guess so, better figure out a point of departure and get working. Oh hey, I've got a deadline now, that will give me the kick in the butt needed for actual completion. Maybe printing the score and putting it where my eyes will see it regularly will give me the jolt needed to get started. The first thing I tried felt weird and stunted and didn't work. Toss that out. I still have time. I really should work on this but things feel so hectic all the time. The span of time I have to do this is decreasing daily. I tugged along my camera on this walk, I should really actually film something. Getting a little entangled in the possibilities, but I'm submitting to the chill of the late afternoon and heading back home to make dinner. I have no desire to do domestic duties, but they do not magically suspend themselves while art is being made. After some contemplation, I make tags with every rune, the associated words, and
length of time for each. It's time to release the pressure of coming up with something brilliant and just get to work. I make plans to head for the hilltops. My brain resists for a while, sure that whatever I am going to make will be awful, but I load the car with camera, supplies, and oldest kid and we transport ourselves to our favorite local hiking trails. We move forward, as usual looking for trails with no people parked at the trailhead, because pandemic. We find water. I start there. Always a good way to defeat blockage and get things flowing. Oldest kid does not mind the delay as mom fiddles with her camera, and is quite content to sit and watch the river. My impulse was right, small cards I can carry along and read the prompts from helps me with getting started and is recharging my excitement for the project. When it is time to start dropping blocks of video into the editing program, I find that the precisely given times are actually making it go much quicker than my usual editing experience. At first I am resistant to the spread of time between some clips and wonder if I should do...something with them. Eventually I find something interesting in the extraneous black spaces and leave them. I look back, wonder what associations are brought up in the form of the abstract and overlapping video I made. After carrying the ideas in the back of my mind all month, I am glad to be done and ready to separate from the work as it goes out into the world. |