Ólafur Arnalds’ Eulogy for Evolution 2017 1440 is musical symmetry.
I am in Week Six of Julia Cameron’s Finding Water. Now 18 weeks into her writings, she professes somewhere along the way that we do not celebrate enough the work of other artists who are brave enough to be themselves. I must do that here with the work of Ólafur Arnalds and a piece called 1440.
The piece is sublime, intoxicating, and contrite, all in the course of it’s six-minute fifty-six-second life.
I breathe, I whisper, I cry, I dream, I remember, I pray, I hope, I long for what was and what still will be in this song’s life.
I know nothing of his intent in writing this piece, but the Piano Channel of Apple TV plays it once or twice daily of late and when I hear it, I stop what I’m doing and close my eyes and enter the world of the music.
This is what music is made for, to take us somewhere. To our own place. Not the one the composer designed, but to the place only we can share with God. And that’s what happens when I am enjoined with the sounds of this piece.
The song is available on iTunes.
Here’s one video interpretation. I’m not sure of the video’s point. I can’t determine the storyline but the work is good.
Regardless, a salute to Ólafur Arnalds for this fine song. It has a special place in my heart. Thank you.
I’ve reached Week 11 of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. My life has changed tremendously in the past 11 weeks. I will tell you that. Probably more so than any stretch of time the rest of my entire life. The positive impact this book has had on me can scarcely be measured.
Everything You’ve Got
My twin daughters were visiting on Tuesday for the Fourth of July and the younger one, Haley, (by all of seven minutes) (Oh, and they turned 18 today) kept noticing and making fun of taped images I have at key places around the place. The note says, “Everything You’ve Got.” She was trying to be grammar queen on me and tell me it should be “Everything I Have,” but I’m not changing it.
The origin of the line comes from Ryan Gosling’s character Seb in La La Land when he’s talking to Mia outside the Griffith Observatory toward the end of the movie. She’s auditioned for the part in the Paris film and she’s asking him about what they’re going to do about their relationship and their chase for their dreams. Will he come to Paris with her or stay in LA and pursue his dreams while she goes to Paris to chase hers? He tells her, “When you get this part, you’re going to have to give it everything you’ve got.” He knows the importance for her of chasing her own dream, one that is not his own, and he knows the importance of chasing his dream. And to accomplish the dream, every dream, ones you and I have as well, that’s what it takes, “Everything You’ve Got.”
The Writer’s Path
There now are 24 days left for those of us in the final stages of The Writer’s Path Program at SMU. On Aug. 1 we turn in the first 15 pages of our manuscripts for blind-judging. Thirteen of us in the program will be selected to go to New York in November to meet with publishers and agents with the Big Five. The pressure is on.
But what I have found by working through The Artist’s Way is that whether or not my book gets selected, it’s going to be okay. I’ve taught myself over the past 11 weeks that I am “a prolific writer and a great artist.” We were told to practice saying that allowed in one of the first few weeks. It was kind of hard to do at the beginning, without laughing that is. I’ve gotten better at saying it aloud over the past few months.
My art is an expression of the inner child who lives within me. The one who has been squashed, crapped on, booed, chided, beaten down, put down, insulted, and abused over the course of my life. All those words are being brushed aside because of TAW and what I’ve learned by reading the book, writing my morning pages every single day since I started them, and doing the chapter tasks.
Not Just For Writers
I told my daughter Haley the other night that she should start working in her own book. That it would change her life. Then she threw more wood on the fire of the past saying “I don’t want to be an artist. You’re always broke.” Ouch.
I’ve had a hard eight years of life and no, I’m not making as much money these days as I used to. But more importantly, emotionally and mentally, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I’d trade that for lots of money and the problems that come with them any day of the week. Would it have been nice to have more disposable income? Without a doubt. My life would be even more drastically different had that been the case. But God has also used this opportunity to teach me much about life that I was missing.
I’ve never been much for material things. I want a reliable car, a roof over my head, my Macs, Canon camera equipment, and oil paints and canvases, a comfortable bed to sleep in, health care, healthy food to eat, and enough furniture to be able to sit in a chair and watch TV on rare occasions. The car is somewhat on the fritz right now, which is troubling, and income is shallow. But I have most of those other things and they’re helping me in my experience with life. They are helping me write my book. Two weeks ago I made my first short film on Zelda Fitzgerald. And because I’ve made changes in my food lifestyle, weight is falling off my body. My back injury the past year has hurt me in many ways and held me back. That issue is being addressed through legal channels.
What is most important to me though is how close I’ve grown to God and seen that God, as the great creator, created me, you and the world around me. He made the world in seven days according to the Bible, but he didn’t just stop creating then. He still does it today. And in me, he has given the ability to create new stories, new films, new colors, new paintings, new building designs, new whatever he and I can pair up together to dream.
That’s the satisfaction I have from 11 weeks of reading and working in The Artist’s Way. One does not have to be a writer, or a self-declared artist to gain something from this book, but I will almost bet anyone who follows it methodically, working one chapter a week and then doing all the exercises, writing the morning pages, and doing the weekly artists days will find such a dramatic change in their lives, they’ll never regret having invested the time.
My favorite shot in the short film, “Zelda, Almost Home.” The tunnel leads to Riverfront Park in Montgomery, Alabama.
A short film about Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and a ghostly return home.
The premise for the short film Zelda, Almost Home is quite simple: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1900, lived a wild and tumultuous life with the author of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom she met in 1918. What if she returns still as a ghost?
The inspiration to shoot Zelda, Almost Home came from watching Vincent Laforet’s Reverie on YouTube. You’ll also notice there’s a hat tip to Damien Chazelle and his film La La Land— Zelda walks in front of a mural. Simon Cade from DSLR Guide has been a big influence and coach as well. (This is my first short film. I’m 51 years old.)
Come to find out, there are ample stories around Montgomery already to suggest the premise for this film is dead on. The halls of Baldwin Middle School are full of stories alleging apparitions of Zelda. As I talked with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Executive Director Sara Powell last Friday, had two more accounts, recent ones, as the museum prepares to open upstairs rooms as a bed and breakfast.
So as you read and watch the film, please know, that it is grounded in much less fantasy than you might first suspect.
The Making of Zelda, Almost Home
One of the first things any viewer will note is the music, Almost Home, composed by Moby and used with permission from his website, MobyGratis.com. He offers free use of his material provided it’s used for purposes like this—non-commercial and creative expression.
The film is shot entirely in Montgomery, Alabama, from June 22-25, 2017. And that is part of my commentary for shooting this, there are almost no films about Montgomery that are actually SHOT in Montgomery.
It is all shot with a Canon D60, part with a Nifty Fifty lens, and part with an 18-135 mm. The camera for the most part is mounted on a Neewer Image Stabilizer. Shots from the car the camera was mounted on a tripod.
Shot List
The intersection of Zelda and Fitzgerald, Montgomery
The street sign on the corner of Zelda and Fitzgerald in Montgomery, Alabama.
The opening shot is designed to give homage to Montgomery for honoring Scott and Zelda, while also having our Zelda set the scene that she was full of life when she lived here. It is not hard to imagine the real Zelda spinning around her street sign with glee.
Five minutes after we left the scene, I drove back through and someone had called Montgomery Police to investigate what we were doing. A patrol car was sitting where I’d been parked and was using the lights of the car to light up the street sign.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, Felder Avenue
The house on Felder is now a museum. They have a fascinating collection of Fitzgerald memorabilia and are open every day of the week except Monday for tours. And they are in the process of opening an upstairs suite as a bed and breakfast so those seeking inspiration for their writing or filmmaking can soon stay in the same rooms as the Fitzgeralds for nine months back in the 1920s. This is said to be the longest the two lived anywhere together. And it was the last place they ever lived as a family.
Winter Place, Goldthwaite, and Mildred
It is often said that Scott and Zelda met at the Montgomery Country Club. But lore now suggests in fact that they met at Winter Place on Goldthwaite. Part of the tale goes is that Zelda’s daddy, Judge Anthony D. Sayre, who lived four blocks away, would not have approved of her being at Winter Place so saying they met at the country club was much more proper.
The McBryde-Screws-Tyson House, Mildred
Christian Lowry, the owner of the house, tells the tale that Zelda was friends with the girls who lived there at the time. He says Zelda used a ring she’d been given by Scott to carve their initials in a second-story window. Mr. Winter, who owned Winter Place across the street, is said to have had a thing for Ms. Zelda when she was younger and so as an admirer when McBryde-Screws-Tyson lies vacant, he sent men into the home to extract with window pane Zelda carved initials into.
The McBride-Screws-Tyson House in Montgomery, Alabama.
It is hoped, that since Mr. Winter was something of a packrat, as Winter Place goes through renovation, the original piece of glass will be found and hopefully returned to its rightful window.
But this is the sentimental importance of this shot in the film.
*I have been spelling McBryde with an I instead of Y. That’s now corrected on June 30, 2017, though I can’t change it in the YouTube post.
The Train Shed
There are stories about Zelda and the train shed in Montgomery. It was the prime way in and out of town for Zelda and Scott. But it is also said that she dressed down one day and walked around with a tin can seeking donations. News of this, of course, stirred Judge Sayre. Which is probably what it was meant to do.
The Riverfront Tunnel
The Riverfront Tunnel has changed over the years. Only recent efforts by the city to bring nightlife back downtown has led to the amazing lighting in the tunnel. The colored lights and the depth of the shot make this one of my favorite scenes in the film. I thought about going back and having Zelda walk perfectly framed up the lighted tunnel but then it’d be too staged and too fashioned, something the true Zelda would not allow.
Tallapoosa Street
This is one of the apex locations in downtown Montgomery, connecting with Commerce Street, critical to the city’s past and present.
The Alley
Over the past 15 years, the Alley has really come to life as an attraction in Montgomery, and wherever there was a party in this town, well, it’d attract Zelda.
Tallapoosa and Commerce Statue of Hank Williams
The Hank Williams Statue is now the gateway into the Riverfront Park area of the downtown area.
RSA Tower Fountain on Dexter Avenue
David Bronner has built a series of buildings throughout Montgomery over the past 40 years. The fountain this Zelda moves around was not here when the real Zelda lived. But my character couldn’t resist the temptation to play. She really wanted to get into the water like the real Zelda would have done in New York minute.
Catoma Street view of Troy State
Troy State wasn’t located here back in the day but is an important part of the downtown scene, connected to the Davis Theatre and across the street from the Jefferson Hotel where Scott and Zelda are said to have stayed, as well as being near the Rosa Parks Museum, which I believe back in the day was also the Empire Theatre, one of the first air-conditioned places in the hot of the South.
Sunny Paulk Civil Rights Mural, Lee and Montgomery Streets
Hat tip to La La Land and having Emma Stone walk past the You Are The Star Mural. Montgomery has a beautiful Civil Rights Mural here and we just had to include it. Zelda was gone before all of that came to be and so it was fitting for her to just walk past.
Oakwood Cemetery, Plot 28, graves of Minnie and Judge Anthony D. Sayre
There is a memorial plaque for Scott and Zelda, their daughter Scottie Smith, and Zelda’s parents, Minnie and Anthony D. Sayre in Oakwood Cemetery. When we arrived for shooting, the sunset was alive with color and emotion.
The first shot is of Zelda mourning over the plaque. She then runs her hands over the stone above her father’s tomb. Out of love and emotion, the Zelda character in the film lies down on the stone above Minnie and puts her hand on Minnie’s name. By then it was too late to see, but the poignancy should not be lost. Zelda would dearly miss her Momma for many reasons all of us would.
Old Alabama Supreme Court Building, Dexter Avenue
Justice Sayre served on the Alabama Supreme Court from 1909 to 1931. Zelda would visit this place and miss her daddy.
Old Alabama Supreme Court Building.
The Alabama Capitol
The Capitol is just a stone’s throw from the Old Supreme Court Building.
Chris’ Hotdogs, Dexter Avenue
Chris’s Hotdogs is 100 years old this year. I don’t know if Zelda ever went there to eat before she left town, but the odds are pretty good that she would have. They have served every sitting Alabama governor since they opened. It makes sense the lead Flapper Girl would have been a customer, too.
Court Street Fountain
Many a girl like Zelda has climbed the fence at the fountain to wade into its waters looking down Commerce Street toward the Alabama Riverfront and up Dexter Avenue toward the Capitol.
Sunroom window, The Fitzgerald Museum
The sunroom at the museum would hold special value to Zelda. Scottie, their daughter, wrote about its importance during the Christmas the family spent in the home. As a ghost looking back, she would totally take time to look into this room and remember the gem of joy they experienced there as a family for one of the few times ever.
The Museum at night, Felder Avenue
Day or night, the museum is a treasure of Montgomery.
My Own Zelda Ghost Story
So, the night before we began shooting while walking up the drive to the museum, a white and tan cat came running out of nowhere and up to me. I am allergic to cats and don’t care for them. This one, as I was standing in the drive looking at shots, avoided my Zelda actor, (Angie Tatum Weed) and began curling around my legs. I finally said, “Hey Zelda!” and the cat stopped.
I walked a mile into the woods today to be further away from you and closer to me.
Perhaps I succeeded.
But it was time for another view.
I walked a mile into the woods today.
I hear planes in the distance.
The wind rushing over my ears.
The rustle of the leaves.
Feet padding along the trail.
Cars way off in the distance.
Birds.
Cracks and smacks of branches and sticks.
The whisper of the wind across my ear drums.
The pulse of God’s breath moving across my arms.
The bursts of sunlight breaking through the crown of the trees above.
The dancing shadows across the ground.
The to and fro of branches wafting in the wind.
The colors, greens, darker; brown, black, bright green and gray.
I hold out my hand and the sun catches it, throwing a shadow across the ground.
But it’s not crisp, it weaves in and out of light.
There, it’s solid.
No, now it’s not.
There are patterns from shoes that have been here before me.
V-shapes, circles, squares.
At deeper depths.
Tire tracks, from bikes.
A broken branch lies a few feet away.
The light above illuminates the top, worn from who knows what.
The rest of the bark is intact.
A tiny yellow flower, no bigger than a diamond clings to nature’s floor, protected by fronds of green petals.
A yellow star of a flower.
It’s a miniature star, yellow, with a darker yellow center.
And it was waiting for me to come along and sit here today, for me alone to capture.
Or maybe, just maybe it’s my metaphorical reflection, a quantum physics of sorts I do not yet comprehend.
But I’m trying.
My eyes are open.
Again.
A bird chirps overhead. Now it’s gone.
Divergent travelers surround me.
Another over-crowded airliner moans eastward overhead.
I hear a truck far off, backing up, backing up, backing up.
Both are in a race.
While I sit here.
Still.
Forgetting to breathe.
Or think about anything but the moment.
The sky above is blue.
The leaves above reflect the white light of the sun—not greenness at all.
While others are shades far darker in the shade.
And then there are the branches where from many feet below I can see the chloroplastered canals of leaf after leaf after leaf.
Like a playground bully, the wind pushes the leaves.
Like me in my inner frights of seeing too many parental fights, they never push back.
So many forces working against them and they continue a dance in the wind as if none of their opposition matters.
These are Spring leaves.
Deep inside I must resemble a crumbling one in Fall.
I see bees buzzing past me.
Clumps of white spores float along in the air.
A blue butterfly.
Then a Monarch.
A bird is somewhere off in the distance.
This snack he’s missing.
I’m glad.
There go two more now, chasing each other into the leaves like lovers in a Hollywood musical.
A water fall of sorts is no more than forty yards from where I sit.
The water rushes.
Like the mass of human drama beyond, it doesn’t relent.
A constant wash of white noise blending in with all the other orchestral parts employed around me.
The wind is blowing the branches above my head making the leaves look like a million pinwheels as they sway two and fro.
A kaleidoscope of light and shadow and mystery.
I want to lie down on the path in front of me.
On my back and flatten against the earth, staring up into the azure blue, and then just close my eyes and take it all in all the more.
But my inner parent voice says that’s not allowed.
Or maybe it’s an echo of an actual parent voice.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll bring a blanket or a towel.
Or maybe I should just try it.
Who will know?
Those damned inner parent voices.
What do they really know?
Now a dog behind me somewhere has joined his bit part in the symphony of outdoor sounds I am awash in.
At home, if it were my dog, this would bug me, but in the distance, the sound is different.
Not annoying.
Not troublesome.
Now it’s stopped.
No, it hasn’t.
To my distant right I see one lone purple flower at the seam where the grass is no longer edged and bushes, Mother Nature, takes over.
The pink/purple flower. I took a picture anyway.
Just a lone purple and pinkish dot on the horizon.
And it, too, dances in and out of the bright light overhead.
Maybe I should go take a picture.
Maybe I should let the one in my mind’s eye be enough.
Click.
There goes a wasp.
Keep going.
Arms dropping.
Pincers ready.
I’ve been stung by you and life too many times already.
Keep going.
Maybe it’s time to load up the pack and head back.
Or maybe I should close the computer and open my mind more.
There went a shadow of a plane from overhead, racing on its way.
Why do I want to follow in pursuit?
A yellow butterfly just swooshed off to my left.
It doesn’t need clearance to fly.
No flight plan required.
Without a set destination.
Gate to gate time is of no concern.
Pushback.
Just the will to be.
It’s gone now.
I’ll go now, too.
There is so much more to see.
Zero Dark Thirty Reveals Flavor of the Truth We Will Never Fully Know
If you’ve not seen the movie Zero Dark Thirty about the decade-long search for Osama Bid Laden I recommend you see it at least once. Unlike The Hobbit or Argo, I’m not sure I’ll be going back again. Though the movies rising star and now Golden Globe winner, Jessica Chastain, could tempt me, it’s just not a movie I will find myself wanting to see time and time again.
And here’s why; it reminds me too much of the stress I’ve felt ever since seeing the second plane fly into the second tower in New York on 9/11. That was a horrific day and one I shall not forget and watching a movie about going after the guy who allegedly caused it all, while satisfactory in the outcome, just stirs cracks in the wounds I hope that some day will be more healed than they are now, even after 11 years.
Revenge and justice are good things. Well, as Christians we’d argue the first emotion isn’t such a good thing. Yes, I’m glad we just shot OBL dead instead of letting him live and go through a trial somewhere to give him additional time to stir his troops and generate tremendous additional costs of man power, lives and wasted oxygen on him.
But as fictional character Maya gets on the plane at the end and starts crying, I have to wonder why she’s crying. Because the saga is over and she’s worked so hard to make it happen, or for those who have lost their lives, or because even after traversing the world and chasing after this scumb bag all these years, killing his ass really didn’t bring about the satisfaction she’d hoped for.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we got OBL and the world clearly is a safer place with him dead. But the point of all this is, after seeing a long movie about the process, largely fictional and factual, how much we never will really know, I’m just not in a hurry to go to a theater and sit through it again. If you had to go through the past decade again every day with the knowledge that OBL was still on the loose, would you want to do that?
There also is the wide discussion among the libs that there’s an inference in the movie that waterboarding/torture works and that that led to finding OBL. How politically incorrect that’s seemed to the left.
And I couldn’t help but having the feeling of what seeing a movie like this is going to do in the minds of OBL followers. Will it enrage them and encourage them to produce new attacks on American soil, American theaters and moviegoers?
And then I have to wonder how much of what was portrayed in the movie was real and what was invented by Hollywood. In that, Zero Dark Thirty reveals a flavor of the truth that ultimately we will never fully know.
Yes, I do encourage you to go see the movie. It is good cinema. Yes, I’m glad OBL is dead. Do we have closure now?
I just returned from the movie theater and feel obliged to share a few words about the Stephen Spielberg‘s Lincoln, of which I just spent the past 2.5 hours watching, enjoying and now sharing that it is indeed, worthy of praise.
My Lincoln Movie Review–Worthy of Praise, will be lost on the “47 percent.”
Lincoln long has been one of my favorite presidents. Never will the barber my mom used to take us to on Route 51 in Hobart, IN, circa 1970 likely ever forget, nor shall my mother, the moment I asked if he could fashion my hair in such a way as to make the part go in the other direction so it would mirror that of our nation’s 16th president. (I was five at the time.)
In the 1990s, Gov. Fob James of Alabama, whom I had the privilege of working with, was a student of Lincoln and his ways. Gov. James even used the theme of “A New Birth Of Freedom” from the Gettysburg Address, as the theme for his 1994 inaugural.
I say all that to suggest I know a little about Mr. Lincoln.
Lincoln–The Movie
Or so I thought until I saw him personified in this movie.
We never shall know how Mr. Lincoln’s voice truly sounded, but after seeing this movie, I should like for it to never have sounded any different than that of Daniel Day-Lewis‘. And to the credit of Spielberg, this isn’t one of those movies of the Civil War era where Hollywood theatrics have damaged the flow of the film with bad ridiculous Southern enunciation, and obviously glued on beards and such as that awful Gettysburg film Turner Productions did back in the 1990s.
No, this is the real deal.
Day-Lewis brings Lincoln back to life in a way that probably hasn’t been done since he walked this earth among our forefathers. From the iconic hat where it is suggested Lincoln kept notes for speeches, to the tall stature, to the stoic poses and even sleeping in his chair while considering a message to telegraph to Gen. U.S. Grant, you feel like you’re getting to know the depth and weight of the troubles this president knew as he worked so hard to hold this nation together.
From the moment this film begins, you feel like you are in DC in the midst of Lincoln’s second term.
Sally Field plays Mary Lincoln so very well. She looks like every photo I’ve ever seen of her. There’s one scene where she and Tommy Lee Jones go back and forth where I began to wonder what it was about, but it was to help add some strength to the story of the role this First Lady played in our nation’s history as well.
Jared Harris from Mad Men fame leaves me thinking I am watching Gen. Grant as he meets with the president, and as he bids farewell to Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.
The lighting, costuming, and mood are all right.
Go See This Film
If you’re a history buff.
If you want to have a deeper understanding and appreciation for the spirit of what this nation was intended to be, and seems to have drifted so far afoul from.
If you want a taste for lobbying in the 1860s to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, around which most of the plot of the movie centers.
If you want to have a taste for what this country once endured so that we might all be here to celebrate it today.
This film isn’t going to keep up with Twilight Breaking Dawn, or the new Bond movie at the box office. No, those are films for the “47 percent.” This is a film for those who have a more mature understanding of what the American Dream once was; something worth fighting for, something worth risking everything to save it all. Teens won’t sit through this movie, and most likely, your date won’t either. This is a movie where you need to take your brain, your love for America, and be proud to walk out of the theater at the end celebrating a the new birth of freedom we all were given because of a president like Abe Lincoln.
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