Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
10 That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
Both of those terms are used of music which repeats an element which is modified in some aspect each time. My music expert friend doesn't know which one is more apt of my videos, but since chaconne gets more than twice as many hits as passacaglia, I'll go with that.
Vid description
The repeated segment is 1/16th normal speed unless otherwise noted.
Holcomb gardens is a delightful public space at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana.
I call videos such as this a video chaconne or passacaglia because of the repetition with variations of a segment.
I find when my brain is most overloaded with pain, such projects are among the only ones I have the concentration to do, and in getting involved in such projects I get more relief than I do via my medicines.
I did this in Windows Movie Maker beta instead of Power Director because it allows the layering of multiple effects on one clip.
The Bach passacaglia is from musopen.org - I used the latest beta of Audacity to adjust the time and add in the "insectile" effects, mostly using the wawa plugin. A screen cap of the settings used is included.
Audacity is outstanding open source audio editing software available for most platforms.
Took a number of pix and vid of this little guy (he's at most 1cm long) this AM, but don't know what he is... know I've seen it before, know I probably "know" it, but with the spasms & pain my body and brain are in, its frequently the case that most of what I "know" is inaccessible to me.
Both the content and the construction of this video are very telling of how I'm surviving even though the torment of my body- far from subsiding- has increased, and the medicines I have available to me do not effectively deaden the pain or spasms or address the other related issues.
I've always loved nature, and by soaking it in I find peace and experience God. I barely even watched TV when I was a child, I was always outdoors.
So its very fortunate that when my body went kaput, I was in a place where I could so easily access and behold nature- weather, plans, animals. Those three months I couldn't walk, I could still look outside and see birds on the feeder, the dogs playing in the snow, and scenes like the one in the picture above.
Its nice that I can move around now, but the dynamic is really no different. I am so fascinated by plants and animals and weather that I can get distracted by watching them or taking pictures and video of them... that time I spend focused on the beauty around me outside, or in honing and presenting it in a video, is about the closest I come to having relief from my promethean torments these days.
The other things which are powerful enough to draw me out of my own personal daily hell are
Touching, talking, being with Tess
Lending an ear to a friend or family member
Engaging and embracing the beauty of the natural world by working with it in the yard.
Indeed... one day in the hospital was especially dark... so dark we didn't think I'd be here assiduously NOT talking about it now. I got through that day by holding Tess, working on a rug, and lending an ear to a friend in need.
Before I went to the Seminary, I most communed with God by helping people in sorrow and by being in nature. Nothing has really changed there.
Perhaps that will help you understand why I'm not angry at God about this. God has provided me a safe, comfortable, beautiful place to live where I can always experience Him through His Creation.
God has given me Tess now for 15 years.
He's given me people who love me, and who need my love... people who help me and who need my help.
I don't expect God to be some sort of prayer-operated vending machine. He's under no obligation to relieve me of pain or restore my health. He has been true to His promises though, the way He always has been.
Its DEEPLY ironic, but in this time when my body and mind alike are greatly impaired, I am the most fully and richly me I've been in ages. It all comes down to embracing and being surrounded by
Beauty in nature
Love
Truth
And receiving them with gratitude. Sure, it takes a lot of creativity to get through each day, but its that very creativity which gets me through.
Creativity first takes me out of myself- which is a good thing, something I desperately need given the pain, torment, turmoil of my body and nervous system.
Then it fills me with peace and beauty... my words don't reach far enough to quite make this connection, but maybe if I say it this way:
- Creativity for me is a form of meditation / prayer ... creating art is not primarily a manual act but an existential experience.
That'll have to do. The video and my discussion of it is below. You'll see that this video quite well fits in to the sort of pattern I described earlier today... it wasn't at all technically challenging... the major "tasks" for me were cutting out the parts of the video where there were no hummingbirds (I shot these on a tripod for 10 minute spells the last couple of mornings) and finding the right music. Beethoven's Tempest is PERFECT for these frantic, frenetic creatures!
But taking time to do these things did me more good than taking any of the score of pills I've taken today... and such is usually the case. Even when I take the maximum amount of medicine I'm allowed, my perception of pain never drops below a 7 on the pain scale.
Of course without a high end camera of the sort they use for "time warp" its impossible to catch the action of these frenetic fellows, but I love the way the sunlight catches them in the morning, and they often perch on this feeder.
The music is public domain from musopen.org, played by Paul Pitman
The segue image is an old public domain image from a Russian language encyclopedia
The music suits the subject perfectly, and when when my body itself is in a tempest, I need to embrace and loose myself in beauty.
For more on this piece of music see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._17_(Beethoven)
For more on hummingbirds, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird
I finally figured out a good way to explain why I find it difficult to come online and interact with you dear folk. With all the aches and pains in my muscles and joints and strange phenomena in my brain, I'm constantly overwhelmed by stimuli. Its as if my body is waging a Denial of Service attack on my brain. This line from the Wiki's definition is especially apt:
One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable(Emphasis added).
I even have a hard time following simple conversation with the people around me, because the net effect of my brain issues, med side effects, and stimuli from my body just overwhelms me, and I can't think in or make sense of language.
Fortunately, this doesn't affect my ability to take pictures or video or work with them (well... what's going on with my brain does, but its transient) and I find getting absorbed in a project is often the best way to deal with the physical problems, since they still have neither found a cause nor a course of treatment which frees me of the overload of physical stimuli.
I'm trying to find new ways to do things, so I can come back online, respond to your comments, read your blogs. I've had some significant success in this with other areas of my life. I've been doing yard projects which are drastically less physically demanding than what I was doing before, yet are yielding spectacular results... they're the most beautiful I've ever done. I'll post pictures sometime. I hope I can work out a way to approach being online differently too, but until then, you'll continue to see the fruits of my creativity, but not much of me.
I often feel like the musicians whose soundtracks I use are far more talented (and thus more generous) than I am... such is very much the case with Taylor Hayward.
http://www.taylorhayward.org/freemusic.htm
Shot this on a tripod of a sunflower bent down almost to the ground.
Ever since Fire Spirit, I've gone out of my way to collect good stock footage to use in future projects. I especially like cloud clips where they are framed by foliage.
I shot these sequences mostly as fodder for future projects, and I'm uploading them so others can have good clips of clouds for theirs. That's why the video has none of my usual opening/closing title slides.I muted the audio and used public domain classical music from musopen.com - a nice performance by the US Army band.
I intended this to be just like the previous one, but I didn't want to truncate the third choral piece, so I copied the clip, adjusted the time, and used the edge detection filter in PD7 (Windows Movie Maker has a similar) to fill up the time, as an example for you of what sort of cool things you can do with cloud clips.
Boilerplate:I shot these sequences mostly as fodder for future projects, and I'm uploading them so others can have good clips of clouds for theirs. That's why the video has none of my usual opening/closing title slides.I muted the audio and used public domain classical music from musopen.com
Choral pieces public domain- from http://www.musopen.com/music.php?type=composer&id=129
To learn about this great composer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Victoria
The weather wasn't all that interesting, but the passing of this cold front in early May 2010 did provide for some interesting clouds.
Shot on a tripod, underexposed.
I shot a series of cloud videos using different foliage as frame. The # refers to the file name, included in the title to help keep track of the many such clips.
Music is from http://www.archive.org/details/BB013
"Artist/Composer: ARG
Date: 2004-06-30 00:00:00
Source: BedroomBrain Records - http://www.bedroombrain.com/
ARG is Anatoly Grinberg, an Israeli underground musician engaged in searching the sound of the future. The classically trained Grinberg draws on many influences to craft his unique compositions; his style can be best described as experimental dark-ambient.
While waiting to check out at the dollar store, a man was standing about 2 feet away from me, but apparently he thought he was in Ohio, and that it was necessary for me to hear every syllable he said, because he was talking as loudly as most people yell.
The phrase which really caught my attention, and broke through my fatigue and pain, was
"Yes, she's tried everything,
she just can't get pregnant!"
He went on to discuss in detail more graphic than you'd hear on Discovery Health:
all the reasons why the woman in question couldn't get pregnant
the means and methods employed (some of which sounded more like Olympic gymnast routines than fertility enhancement methods)
what she was going to try next
and his editorial commentary on the whole thing.
My mother was along with me on this trip. We next went to Menard's. Neither of us said a word until we'd been there for five minutes when we looked at each other in dumbfounded astonishment.
The kicker is tho... he wasn't even shopping in the store. He'd wandered over from the laundromat next door. Maybe he has an exhibitionist fetish, and standing near the check out line of the dollar store while discussing the most intimate details of another person's life was his way to get a cheap thrill.
That's it... no deeper life message or editorial commentary... no need.
I've never been one of these guys who thinks that crying is unmanly. I seem to be in the minority on this, and I've paid the price- "sissy," "cry baby," "wuss"... If I could compost all the crap I've gotten for being intensely emotional, I'd have enough top soil to cover an area of the state of Kansas 2 meters deep.
But right now, I'm sick of crying... don't like it one bit.
Its because when I cry now, I weep stale tears.
Each time, its the same tears I've been wringing out of my soul's agony since this started. They're six months old now... and what's the point?
Usually when you cry about something, its like the dam bursts, the tears flood out, and then you're OK.
Not so now... I can spend hours sobbing as muscle spasms go cascading through my body and the torrent of torment rages, and an hour later... they're back... the same stale tears.
I'm OK with the idea of a "strategic retreat" - curling up with Tess and a good movie, or one of the pups and a show about guns or military strategy. That's resting up so I can get up and continue outflanking pain.
But these stale tears... all they do is give the dogs something tasty to lick.
I've been reluctant to post a lot about my experiences these months of overwhelming unrelenting torment.
I can't find words which are apt, and very often, I find I can't make words work at all.
I'm also not too keen to fumble for words and then find that someone has used my post to get in touch with their inner juvenile delinquent. There's always been a certain amount of incivility and flaming online... I was involved with Bulletin Board Services back when the term "flaming" was coined. What's different now is... it used to be a certain amount of effort and intelligence were required to verbally abuse someone. Now, we all possesses numerous devices and opportunities to engage in character assassination and hasten the extinction of civil discourse.
However my psychiatrist spoke very highly of my use of art and creativity in coping with this ordeal and finding ways to wring good out of life and find beauty. That convinced me that even if my posts are not as carefully crafted as before, they're still worth writing.
I know the phrase "stale tears" is very poignant... if the rest of this post made any sense... that's a bonus.
These are the panoramics created by Microsoft's Image Composite Editor. I also shot video clips tripod mounted, so you can well imagine how stunning they are from these. I'm looking to see if there's an easy way I can make them available to other artists the way that I get creative commons licensed music from freemusicarchive.org and archive.org
I also have at least one project I'm working on.
I didn't expect much when I uploaded these to PhotoSynth, but they came out among the best I've done.
It seems to be axiomatic that the more pain I'm in, the more photos and video I shoot. Several reasons...
Pain takes away my ability to think or process, but not to be creative
Without the ability to think, process, even stand up without passing out... there's not a lot else I CAN do
I often find my best recourse to be not heavy narcs but creative arts. While I'm engaged in them, I can loose my awareness of myself, and thus of the pain. Other than when I had a morphine drip in the hospital, when I'm doing creative things is the closest I have come to being out of pain for the last 6 months... .
Unfortunately, editing, mixing, posting, talking about what I've created... these draw on energies and clarity of mind I don't often have.
So my stunning videos will have to wait.
The project I've started with one of the cloud videos will too... the concept was easy to come up with- I noticed how the clip resembled the roaring water of a waterfall when viewed sideways- but execution...
As for outflanking pain...
Every expert of war from Sun Tzu onwards has taught that you never meet an enemy at his strongest point, you look for a weak spot, you go around the side (which is outflanking.)
This experience-which-is-so-far-beyond-"pain"-as-Mt-Everest-is-higher-than-a-hilllaughs at medicine. The meds kill one pain, another arises.
Meeting the enemy head on with medicine is NOT working, and has NEVER worked.
Granted, I'm thankful for what relief I can get... together with Tess, my mother, my dear ones, the pups, the birds, and the Military Channel, I'm able to make it through each day, but only in loosing myself and going outside myself do I get any respite.
This can occur with Tess, when doing light landscaping, and when engaged in the visual arts.
I don't know if this flanking maneuver is something others in a similar state could do- I dearly hope no one else IS in a similar state!- but while "that-which-is-beyond-pain" wins every day, I still make the most of each one. What ever time I'm allowed when my body isn't shaking with spasms of pain, I'm embracing or creating beauty in one of these forms.
I am blessed with so many wonderful photos I've taken, sometimes its hard to pick just one for this project. Generally I don't expect to produce this many variations, but this was fun, and gave me the opportunity to try out a new piece of software- image analyzer.
These word pictures have broad applicability- they could be used in birthday cards for a mother or grand mother, or a mother's day card.
Generally I expect I'll do a couple of versions... at least one landscape and one portrait, so they can be adapted easily to bulletins, tent cards, care cards, etc.
The rest of the Word Pictures based on the mother/daughter pink tulips will have to wait, but as promised, the best pictures of that shoot are being uploaded to all the usual sites.
The special effects you'll see on some of them are from a freeware program I just became aware of, Image Analyzer.
I was drawn to it because it promised an automated way to make photos extracted from a video or taken with a camera phone have higher quality / resolution (as per my challenge before the latest eruption of demonic pain hit)
In toying with it, I discovered a filter called "increase local contrast." It produces very artistic effects I've not encountered with any other program. That filter alone will guarantee it a place in my toolbox.
So... Pixelpipe.com is uploading the images to Multiply and Facebook as we type this. Its time for me to take more meds and go to bed, so the remaining Word Picture versions of these will have to wait.
Any of the Word Pictures I've done with the commandment would work well for a mother's day card if the lady is of a faith tradition where it is relevant. Add your own text to a space in the picture, add the picture to a card template, what ever.
There's countless ways to make a custom greeting card with an image... I'm sure multiply and vendors advertising on Facebook would be delighted to provide you with this service.
I hope some of you are able to make good use of these. I'm still on the darkside of the moon, so tschuss!
I chose the mother/daughter pink tulips for this verse because the image so naturally brings to mind family, offspring, parents.
Any of the images from that series with the verse from the 10 commandments would make a great mother's day card.
Download the image, add your own text, or print the image and write something on the back.
Here's my latest version of it... I'll work on posting the others and the unedited pink mother/daughter tulips after the line of storms we're under all sorts of weather alerts for passes through.
This is another site I stumbled across in looking for good music to use in my videos. Its in German, so if you can't deal with that, use Google or Yahoo to translate it.
Its a fascinating project / movement. Not for the first time makes me wish I could go to Deutschland.
The name of this blog was chosen by my wife. It is her favorite Shakespearian sonnet. It is the inspiration for one of her first tattoos.
I created this blog because I wanted a discreet place to post health news about me and my wife, and perhaps other major life events which may be of interest to a wide range of people, including those who know me from my videos, my ardent "proselytizing" about my rug craft, casual acquaintances and remote family members.
I have other places where I post more specialized content with a more narrow interest / appeal.
Toothbrush rug (or toothbrush handle or toothbrush-handle rugs) are my favorite craft, and I'm here to talk about them and get others interested in them. - I keep this blog focused on the craft of toothbrush rugs. I have other places to talk about more personal aspects of my life.
