So, i haven't been successful in posting video's... I'm starting to think it has something to do with my internet connection. Here it goes again.
Film 112. September 2007. Sharon Swenson. I sit on the third to front row on the right side of the room. I'm excited and anxious for instruction. The process is vicious. Her hybolical words always throw me, yet I can't help taking notes on inner thoughts recently sparked by her lecture. A master teacher. Excited for the first time all day to feel a sense of limitlessness, the way I always feel when the universe opens up and all that's there is me -- art, ideas, truth. She presents to us the idea that what makes film interesting... what really makes people connect with it... transcendence, meaning, escape... has nothing to do with the picture quality or color, tone, look, camera movement (although those things CAN contribute to it's meaning)... when it all comes down to it, unless the subject is interesting, the artform is completely useless. She then proceeds to show us a clip of OK GO, you know the one: treadmills. The camera sits on a tripod the whole 3:05 minutes long: cinematic suicide. (in hollywood terms... not french.) All we care about, as viewers, is how creative their routine is. They walk, they ski, they swim across the screen as the camera silently and obediently stands still. The little tingles, (I'm not sure if everybody got those little tingles) you get when you see something brilliant... yah, I got them.
Now, this clip comes nothing remotely near to that one when discussing creativity, but to me, it opens up a passageway to limitlessness in the same way. The camera sits dormant. The picture is grainy and dark and badly lit. But still, for me it's magic. It occurs to me every time I watch this how loved I am... and how much I can love. When I watch this I see friendship -- years and years of communicating with someone through notes and chords... a chorus filled with joy, support, and admiration. It's real laughter. It's real bonding. It's real. Sometimes it's just nice to remember that true art is deeper then steady movements and flashy colors... it's rooted deep inside of us and expressed in the simplest of ways. And often, quite often I think, art isn't meant to be art... it's just the only means we can think of to express something... and then voila! ... art appears.
