The footage comes from October 2nd, when I videotaped a 'poetry reading,' and it's taken this long to figure out how to import it from the DV camera into Final Cut Express, and then to take one tiny 37 second clip from the 16 minute video and freeze frame either end and add titles - a process of probably 5 hours after "capturing" the video itself. It would be so easy to do this in iMovie but I am determined to learn FCE since one can do vastly more with it. Last night, desperate, I spent an hour searching on-line for an affordable course on FCE in Toronto, finally emailing a friend who'd taken one through Continuing Ed at a local college last Winter, and he emailed back el pronto with the details and so I shall enroll for the January session. I can't imagine I'll manage to learn that much between now and then since my main source for learning is You Tube FCE tutorials. This entire silly little clip, which I post to let you know I am still flailing away here, was done following the directions of a few kindly You Tube posters.

If you have criticism to offer, offer it in a loving, supportive way. Give constructive feedback to help the other succeed rather than to point out what they did wrong. Sometimes people who love us give us the opportunity to hear rare truths that can improve our lives.

I saw Vanilla Sky some time ago, enjoyed it. Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), written and directed by Amenábar, the original Spanish film that Vanilla Sky was a re-make of, however, has shaken me. Intersplicing of love, betrayal, loss, anger, desire with an attempted murder/horrible scaring accident, dreaming, virtual reality, insanity, and the struggle to re-find the self and the real world from inside an illusion - it's a powerful tale.

When the actors can reveal the underlying emotional complexity of a story like this, as this cast does, in particular Noriega, it makes for theatre that crosses the bounds of 'on the screen' to us, our lives.

Seeing a younger Penélope was delightful too.

If you read this on a RSS feed, don't hit "enclosure" because that'll start a download, just pop in to the site to view. I'm not uploading these little sessions to You Tube, they're not "serious" enough.

As the title says, more chitter chatter. Spent most of the afternoon draping my space in fabrics and recording a poetry reading and trashed the whole lot, ah well. Much to learn. This chat refers to that, and then goes off to discuss how meditation (for me) is nothing, all rather vague. But there it is.

Overexposed night scene, again. Have to do something about the lighting. But then I am middle-aged and the lighting is rather kind. As I do these videos I'm losing shame, it's true. Daylight is still too stark, and anyway who feels like chatting when the photons are pouring through the atmosphere in the masses they do during daylight?

Yes, I am wearing a red bra - the black one is drying on the rack hanging on the shower rod after being laundered earlier today. Normally I wear black with black, red with red, you understand. Gaffs.

The post I refer to in the vlog, which is a good post of substance (unlike mine) on Buddhist meditation is Dale's.

From Rubies In Crystal

That was fun to do in Photoshop Elements. I wonder how you do it in FinalCut Express, or can you? It was an overexposed black & white shot that I did about 50 things to, including the red colouring & cropping at an angle (without distorting the central image). The final photo is kind of fun, and a story could be woven from it. When my children were at a Waldorf School for the short time they were, I recall not only many puppet shows by the early grade teachers, but that the puppets had very minimal features or were faceless, and this was so the child could better imagine the character in the tale being told.
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From Rubies In Crystal

Wouldn't call this "a video" so much as how one might talk in a quiet conversation with a friend. Therefore, a vlog (video blog). Sparked by a discussion of 'change' in my dance class, reminiscences on my years of journaling leading me to feel that we only become more of who we are...

Another side... this one makes us laugh. Hope you get a chuckle too.

This blog is a place where I keep my work, along with the progress of pieces. Here's a little Butoh-inspired dance piece in the process of...

Last night I stayed up till 3am composing piano notes in GarageBand to go with it, but had trouble synchronizing, also the notes were too busy in the middle. My first go with GarageBand, and I'm not a musician, so allowing my clumsiness to guide me.

Then I'd also like to overlay images since I found something that struck me on National Geographic this morning, but don't seem to be able to do it in iMovie. Should I go for broke and invest in FinalCut Express? Hopefully I can copy my old Photoshop Elements onto this computer and might be able to change transparencies to overlay that way.

In the Japanese aesthetic, art is always embodied in images of nature. This is true of Haiku as well as Butoh. I may or may not add the photo, but I'd like to have the technical capability to try it and see if it works.

Anyway, the uncut video. I have no idea what sort of poem will arise; perhaps it'll just be a single image. Who knows. Creating it as I go.

My 3rd attempt at a VideoDancePoem.

Discussing Butoh-based dance having just completed a 4 day workshop with Denise Fujiwara in Toronto, Canada.

Ok, so. My first iMac video on Butoh-based dance with a poem in my white flannel nightgown this morning.

Even before coffee. I leave as is. Though I did add the poem later this evening and you might have to increase the volume since, though I re-recorded a number of times much closer to the computer's built-in microphone than the original clip, I wasn't able to arrive at the same volume levels.

In the emptiness of the dancer everything comes to be. I hope I imparted this in my little experimental video. Sharing a recent experience which I am in the process of understanding.

Strange and surreal as it appears, the intensity of the dancers, intimacy, exposure, vulnerability are the core of Butoh.
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YouTube URL here
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Butoh Dancers

do not express but expose embodied emotion

in the Noh tradition of restraint

line of red belts on the kimonos

the dancers move towards us

as slowly as the moon bleeds through the sky

they are intermittently earth, water, fire, air

gone are the wild rhythms of their bodies

they are empty silk shells on the stage

who reveal their intimate selves

what is most human
our contradictory states

our warring, our longing, our loving

without the effort of thought

we who do not watch
or even witness

a performance

rather we complete
their process

of us


© 2008, Brenda Clews

Today my 3 month old Dell Inspiron laptop arrived back from a Dell Depot. Installed in it is a fourth hard drive, the fourth since the first one failed about mid-August, followed by the failure of the second one 3 days after it was installed, followed by the failure of the 3rd hard drive one hour into the four-hour Vista installation process. I see they have replaced the hard drive and the motherboard this time. I wonder if the laptop will actually work smoothly for the rest of its natural life?

I purchased my iMac nearly 6 years ago and it has run like a dream - never crashed, never had a virus. The most stable computer I have ever owned.

I had the laptop upgraded and configured for my daughter and it was always my intention to give it to her when I was able to afford the MacBook I really wanted.

My short foray into the PC world, however, is enough for me.

This woman is an Apple woman. An Apple woman this woman is.

I'm going for the 24" iMac with a tax credit from some years back & trusting that I will have a job soon. I lost quite a bit of work when the first Dell hard drive failed and that's painful. My old iMac hasn't developed any ticks but I can't, for instance, print a PDF file from it anymore, and many of my bills are electronic now. Most of the keys on the keyboard have to be pressed multiple times when writing; the mouse died some time ago & my daughter and I share an old PC mouse. Replacing the OS on such an old computer and purchasing a new keyboard and mouse is hardly worth the money. I am afraid such an old machine will suddenly crash and I'll lose years of work and my daughter will lose her entire iTunes library. We'll grieve for years. I know I should buy a portable hard drive as backup but being out of work, money is tight. Yet there is enough for the purchase of a new computer, just. Through a simple wire we can transfer everything on the old iMac to the new iMac. Plus we get to keep the darling, dear old machine, it's one of the ones with a white half moon base, a pregnant feminine shape to me, for browsing. I wish I'd kept it under a dust cover all these years, I had no idea it was such a survivor. Who knows, it may run beautifully until it becomes a classy antique.