Creative Collaboration

Since I’ve got back from my trip it’s been all go re: the video for the the song. Did I mention? (Um, yes, I believe I’ve mentioned I wrote a song). My bandmate has done several videos for his own fantastic self so I knew it could be done—I certainly wasn’t going to let something like not knowing anything about recording, directing, filming, or editing stop me.

I did some Google Docs organizational work and figured out what shots would go where when. I found a friend with a camera and sent several emails begging people to show up. We did the first day of shooting this past Sunday and it was pretty funny, in all sorts of ways. All the actor buddies were extremely tolerant of my shouted directions to “look more adorable, okay?” and the director buddy actually knew what he was doing and the weather cooperated by being suitably grey and dreary and the owner of my local dairy said he couldn’t wait to see the finished product on YouTube. I’ve scheduled two more days of filming over the next three weeks and then I guess I’ll have to learn to edit movies, and then…I don’t know, I guess I’ll put it online and talk about it forever and that will be it, maybe.

Last night I was helping record backing vocals (backing vocals!) for the abovementioned bandmate’s song and of course I was talking about me and me-related subjects, talking about the gig and so forth. Jez said that it was natural I would be so excited about my first (and only?) gig—and that it was a big deal to do such a thing at thirty-two. “Uh, I’m thirty-six,” I said, and laughed and ate my Thai curry and thought, later, about the bigness of this deal.

It’s not so much the song itself—although I totally love it and love singing it, or even the video itself, though I am very proud of my visual concepts and can’t wait to see how they translate to the poorly-buffered laptop screen. It’s maybe a little bit that I always have something to think about (and talk about, you betcha) and consider and ponder.

Mostly it’s how everyone has sort of rallied around me regarding this whole silly thing—from listening to me blabber on about it over lunch to offering to step in to film at the last minute to waiting around ‘on location’ (where ‘location’ equals ‘Deluxe café down the street from my house) to suggesting that we work together to teach me how to edit. I ask for support and it’s there for me, and it only makes me want to support everyone else all the more in their circus performances and haflas and costume design and album cover art. This is thirty-six, for me. I was not like this ten years ago, or even five.

Right now it just seems like it’s everywhere, all this interest in making things and doing stuff, everywhere I look; all I want to do right now is sing silly songs and write ridiculous lyrics and visualize funny video shots. I want to think about art and expression and about getting the world inside your head into the outside. Is this what new parents feel like at first, that all of a sudden there are children all over the place? How long will this last, and what else will happen? What else will we all do together?

(pictures from the gig, taken by my extremely talented friend David St. George are here)