For those of you following my story about YouTube sending me a "Copyright Violation" notice because Rumblefish claimed copyright content on the soundtrack for 'Videopoetry: Voicings,' (which I had made in GarageBand from a voice recording, a midi file generated from the text of the poem, and some small GarageBand loops, all absolutely legal):

5:54 PM (today)

Hi Brenda,

I have released this claim. Apparently is has been misidentified by the YouTube content matching system.

Best,

-Ben

****|Catalog Manager
****@rumblefish.com |

My original post with all the emails is here:
http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2012/01/rumblefish-copyright-notice-from.html

Nice of him to 'blame' YouTube. YouTube had originally written that: "Your video, Videopoetry: Voicings, may have content that is owned or licensed by rumblefish." Yesterday, I wrote back to Rumblefish, and registered a Dispute over this claim with YouTube, and they have backed off.  YouTube gives you only 48 hours from the time the notice is sent out to dispute a claim - then YouTube puts an advertisement on your video which generates money for Rumblefish (or whoever's made the claim) and YouTube.

While I am glad this issue was resolved quickly, it does make me wonder how many artists get hit like this and don't fight back.

Sent from YouTube at 5:38am Sunday morning (and apparently you only get 48 hours to dispute a claim against your work):

 Dear brendaclews,

Your video, Videopoetry: Voicings, may have content that is owned or licensed by rumblefish.

No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team

So I sent rumblefish an email at 8:52am:

Dear Rumblefish,

I have received copyright notice from YouTube that I've used your music.

I am in shock.

No, I have not used your music, nor violated any copyright as far as I know. Reciting a poem I had written (which I can prove), I generated a midi file on-line with text from the poem (which is entirely legal and free, I know one of the creators of that site), and looped a few seconds of some garageband sounds in the distant background. I've scoured GarageBand and do not see anywhere that using a short loop of a few seconds is illegal.

So I am *very* confused.

I can send a .jpg of my GarageBand track.

YouTube is going to put an ad on a video that I slaved over - making that track was a lot of work!

Can you explain to me why you are claiming my voice track as yours? The commercial world can be befuddling to a poet.

http://youtu.be/cj4wdx03Lhk

Thank you,

Brenda Clews


At 11:10am, I sent a second email:

Please Note: I made the sound track myself - from my own voice recording of me reciting my own poem and using a midi file that I generated from my own text and a few small GarageBand loops, as my screen capture of my GarageBand file shows. I've lodged a Dispute Claim with YouTube.

Thank you so much for your kind attention to this matter.

I hope it is resolved soon.

regards,

Brenda

Using GarageBand loops as part of your mix, even for commercial use, is legal and free. From Apple Support http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2931:

"The GarageBand software license agreement says:

"GarageBand Software. You may use the Apple and third party audio loop content (Audio Content), contained in or otherwise included with the Apple Software, on a royalty-free basis, to create your own original music compositions or audio projects. You may broadcast and/or distribute your own music compositions or audio projects that were created using the Audio Content, however, individual audio loops may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on a standalone basis, nor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound effects or music beds."

So don't worry, you can make commercial music with GarageBand, you just can't distribute the loops as loops."

I definitely did not infringe on any copyright by using GarageBand loops, then.

Click here to see my next post for the resolution to this issue.

I am humbled and amazed by these responses to my latest and most ambitious and longest videopoem, Tangled Garden. I thought no-one would take the time to watch it, and I am still taken aback that anyone has. I have a confession to make, I save these comments for bleak days. You have no idea how you inspire me and how much I love you all.

Francois Caroline writes: "Yes this film is good, I am a French poet, writing all day long, but I have never seen such a beautiful creation."

Pierre-Marie Cœdes writes: "I am astounded by so much intelligent creativity : poem, recitation, body performance, imagery, effects, editing, the music with entrancing voice ... all this has led me into an hypnotic voyage, guided by an entrancing voice depicting a world of sensations, inside invisible universal actions, kaleidoscope beings... I just could not take my eyes off the rapture of the incessant movements of the beautiful energized figures in motion ... and ... and ... this is a real masterpiece of art in motion, the expression of a human spirit entangled in so many nature forces, creating, destroying, returning ...

Read the explanation of the author, Brenda Clews, if you do not want to lose your senses ...

Awesome and astounding ..."

Bill Sprague writes: "I just finished watching it. Oh My God, Brenda !! -- That was AMAZING.. I have not had the pleasure to absorb anything so powerful in at least a dozen years. Spiritual, mystical, classically timeless... flowers fly with my standing ovation. Excellent Work !!!"



direct link: Tangled Garden

Tangled Garden is a triptych of nature poems (by me):

-A Floral Opera (2011)
-In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979)
-Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006)

(with impromtu speaking between the poems, which each end with ~~~ in the subtitle track.)

Beautiful singing by the musician, Catherine Corelli from her album, Seraphic Tears (2010) (with her permission).

Note: This video is subtitled. Click on the CC on the play bar to activate or de-activate the subtitles. YouTube will also automatically translate the subtitles into 25 languages if English is not your main language and you would like to get the gist of the poetry.

A blog post describing the making of Tangled Garden.

direct link: Tangled Garden, a triptych of nature poems by Brenda Clews, 2012.

Tangled Garden: a triptych of nature poems, a video/filmpoem by Brenda Clews

-A Floral Opera (2011)
-In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979)
-Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006)

(with impromtu speaking between the poems, which each end with ~~~ in the subtitle track.)

Beautiful singing by the musician, Catherine Corelli mixed from her album, Seraphic Tears (2010) on Jamendo (with her permission).

Note: This video is subtitled. Click on the CC on the play bar to activate or de-activate the subtitles. YouTube will also automatically translate the subtitles into 25 languages if English is not your main language and you would like to get the gist of the poetry.


In contrast to the zippy, fast cuts and commercial-like flavours of many video/filmpoems, Tangled Garden is a slow virtually single-shot video. It is an 'art film.' It is 22 minutes of slowed-down footage. It does move through a process that is Surreal and dream-like. Not much happens, but a lot passes by, if you know what I mean. Tangled Garden is the opposite of an action film.

It has taken 9 months to produce this video. I used some of the footage - you might recognize it - for two 'Solstice' videopoems, non-religious celebrations, one commemorating the beginning of my favourite season, Summer, 'Green Goddess' Masque and one celebrating finding the light in the darkness of Winter, Shadow Cave, because I liked the dance clips, but they were always intended for this videopoem. Tangled Garden is a major piece for me.

Tangled Garden unfolds in a spatial and painterly way; it is not narratorial or linear. I often work with doubles, dopplegängers and reflections, with subjectivities, the selves that compose us, and there is little of that here, but minimally. Rather, the focus is the poetry itself. Three nature poems are spoken as a voiceover, poems that span 30 years. I made a subtitle track (that took 3 days with lots of subsequent corrections), so you can read along if you like.

Three clips form the visual tracks of the video poem. The initial background was shot in early May 2011 in Niagara Falls and the two dance clips on different days in High Park in Toronto (accompanied by my daughter who read while the tripod held the camera videoing me dancing) in June 2011. Both of the dance clips have been worked extensively in Final Cut to arrive at the visual patterns that you see here. As an artist, my video work is very painterly, and I find I compose video canvases based on the static, pictorial vision of a painting. Perhaps they are paintings in motion.

After I shot the initial footage of the plant foliage on May 9, 2011, during a sleepless night on that trip I watched the clip over and over on the small viewfinder of my video camera, wondering what I would do with it. Without seeing earth or sky, a breeze blowing through the tangle of leaves and stalks, light breaking through when the wind was stronger, I found it very rhizome-like, and it reminded me of my memories of my life in that I could enter or exit anywhere and still arrive at an understanding of who I am.

I wrote 'A Floral Opera' (2011) for that initial footage, and for Catherine Corelli's voice in her incredible neoclassical metal album, Seraphic Tears, which I had listened to enroute to Niagara Falls.

Tangled Garden is composed of three earth poems. 'A Floral Opera' is, I feel, one of my most successful poems. Later in the year, having collected 20 years worth of my journals in a large basket, I began going through them, and found a poem written in 1979 based on a dream I had had. 'In the Hands of the Garden Gods' (1979) describes that dream, and it seemed to match the footage and was another approach to the themes 'A Floral Opera' alluded to. I decided to include the older poem. Currently I live near the rooming house where I had rented a small ground floor apartment as a graduate student and where I wrote 'Garden Gods,' and one night, quite far along in the editing of the filmpoem, I had a 'Eureka moment' on the street corner near the house where I once lived: the strange central figure that I have created in the video, the one who moves slowly through the 22 minutes, almost exactly duplicates the transforming earth muse figure, the "lady, lady, lady" who appeared in the dream I had in 1979! Our lives are a strange unity. The final poem that I included was another earth poem, 'Slipstream, the Tangled Garden,' (2006) about hungry ghosts, time, death and the resurrection of life that continues through us even if when we shall no longer exist.

In between the three poems is some ad-libbed talking that I initially did while watching the footage and which my daughter encouraged me to include in the final version. The impromptu speaking is a bit repetitive, but perhaps that's a welcome refrain from the densely packed imagery of each of the poems. After each of the 'official' poems I have put '~~~' in the subtitle track to note their ending and that what follows is a speaking between poems.

The themes in the poems are quite complex, but also they are rich with imagery that I hope holds your attention. They are strange, Surreal, dream-like, body-based, earth-centred, full of reflection, passion, living. The three poems together cover the span of a lifetime of rumination on Nature, the meaning of being alive, having a woman body, birth, life, death, amidst the heritage of our intellectual culture and the extraordinary creativity of our planet which I call the "green fire." A planet we are busy overrunning with our extreme fertility as a species and our polluted ways. I don't, however, push the 6th mass extinction that we are in, though the outlook for our species is gloomy. Emphatically, the "green fire" is far stronger than us. We are merely representations, minuscule embodiments of the earth's creative energy. I embrace the earth's deep and fecund creativity. In the tangled garden of our lives on our natal earth there is beauty, grace, love, compassion, sorrow, fear, caring, and sweetness, sweetness.

Photograph from my videopoem, Tangled Garden, 2012. The resolution of the final video won't be too bad, I think. A fair bit of chartreuse, and other spring greens - the footage is a mixture of 3 clips, one from early May, two from later in June 2011 - that smaller figure on the left also does not appear too often in the videopoem. It's an art film, slow, spatial and painterly rather than narratorial and linear. Made by a single artist rather than a team, a very slow performance piece. The poetry spans 30 years, so represents a lifelong rumination on an earth-centred vision and spirituality. Currently saving a version for uploading to YouTube. Subtitles all done. This is my most ambitious project to date.

The past is always growing in relation to the present. We add everything we are to the moment we are in, and that keeps expanding the more we live. Personally I love the complexity that my memories add to everything I think of and do. A pebble or a cloud is entirely different now to when I was four years old, and I prefer now. But then, I enjoy aging, and revel in the richness of the inner experiences which continue to enrich the world I dwell in and which so beautifully surround me as I continue my journey through it. Every day is a gift - a gift that keeps growing as my memories of living this living gift compound.

direct link: 'You' by Elise Marianne

Poem/vocals/music/video by Elise © Elise Marianne 2012
http://elisepoetry.webs.com/

What I most like about Elise Marianne's videopoem, You, is it maintains an inherent mystery that has an antique, vintage, old world feel. Her work seems to emerge from the distant past into our time. In You the black silhouette plane which contains the crow is like a window we look through, a window of black lace, the bird from some imagined world figuring in ours. It is as if Edgar Allen Poe's crow sits, in silhouette, watching. "...shards of glass about my fingers," the poet says, and it is like we are breaking windows, reaching backward and forward through time.

The poem in the videopoem is on unrequited love, again we are in a distant world of Courtly love, of the Metaphysical poets, of Emily Dickinson behind her lace curtain dreaming of a richly endowed love. "Your eyes a stilled moon-pond /Where I shall drown if I enter." The crow becomes a nightingale, a bird singing of love. But, the deep blacks, sepia and reds of the palette the poet has chosen to convey her vision work on us. "Mouth to barb wire / your mouth around that fenced forest," and we are back again in the mystery of loss, separation, graves, the past that never ends. "Scars of names etched on every oak that bore the name." Distantly, echoing, old Celtic mysteries, Druidic lore, these wind in and out of Lise's video poem. "Pain is longing; pain is love: a bitter twist that makes us human. But are you human?" These ghostly questions resound, her voice echoing after itself. There is warmth to this crypt-like vision, again I am reminded of the great popularity vampire lore currently enjoys, and there is a sense of foreboding, yet an agelessness that is without fear, here too. "What do you expect from me here on the edge for gifts for your ungiving hands?" And, yes, we all know: "This voice is tired of being unheard." It is a dark poem. "Black crows are yours. Dead of night. Shards of glass about my fingers." "This voice is tired of being unheard, tired of waiting. I am done with your silence. Done with the coldness of your winters."

Elise's voice, her wonderful British accent, is clear as a bell, with smoky edges to it. Her visuals are simply gorgeous. She is a poet who makes videopoems who I have been following for some time. Thus far, she has mostly worked with slideshows and I am happy to see her begin to incorporate found footage from various Internet archives into her work.

You is one of her most successful pieces to date. Do check out her website.

From Elise's website:

Elise, is a UK poet, and the founder and editor of International poetry magazine Decanto. Her work has been included in various magazines and anthologies both in the UK and Internationally.

She has written many collections of poetry, including 'For All Eternity', 'The Last Lament', 'Paradise', 'Opium Valentines' and 'Sacred Realm'. She is currently working on a new collection.

Her collections have been widely reviewed. She has also been featured and interviewed in various magazines and ezines, both in the UK and abroad, including;

The Tower Journal USA
Sonnetto Poesia Canada
Gloom Cupboard USA
Book Seekers agency UK ......

Her relay interview with US poet Mary Ann Sullivan, about the poet 'Hilda Doolittle' was featured in 'Jacket2' 2009.

Elise's poetry is often described as Metaphysical/Romanticism, with strong visual imagery. The concept of bringing together words, music and images brought about the idea of video poetry, a field which seems to suit the strong visual quality of her work. Her video poetry also includes her own musical compositions.

Her poetry video collaboration 'Conceptus' with American poet Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, has recently been accepted by the Southbank Centre London.

she writes;

'I like to totally immerse myself in creating video poems. I think it is the ideal way to collaborate multi media, of poem, image and music; the next best thing to a stage production, which has always been a dream of mine. I love the expression of words and how the spoken voice can convey the feeling or emotion of the poem... and of course the music, which I so enjoy creating. It is very satisfying to be able to bring all aspects together collectively'.

I did some very simple things to my 22 minute triptych of nature poems, Tangled Garden, and now have to wait for 9 hours of rendering! Then I'll save to a video format for uploading, which will likely take another 9 hours, then upload to YouTube, and wait for their processing to complete, so, tweets, peeps, and friends, maybe this project that's taken the greater part of a year will be live by Thursday!

Finishing it is on my 2012 list, and yay, almost there! Only 3 more pre-planned projects to go! Colour of Near Death, Wear White Paint for the Moon, and Double Lotus, the last two are performance pieces, which are hard for me to justify doing, given my age, but ageism is not my problem (it's yours if you discriminate against older women), onward, fearless, fearless!

Moved my triptych of nature poems, Tangled Garden, forward by 2 seconds and had to manually adjust 282 subtitles! Sigh - all in the name of art. (And even then, am finding a few small errors in the timing of the subtitles as I go through the track.)

The pic is from a low resolution .m4v (iPhone quality) that I am using to check the subtitles.

As I finally draw near to completion with this 22 minute video project, I have to do the titles.

I took the original video May 9, 2011, and watched it over and over on the viewfinder of my video camera, wondering what I would do with it. It is very rhizomatous. In June I went to the park with my daughter twice to video some creative movement, yoga dance, whatever you want to call it, for this long videopoem. Out of that footage I did make two solstice videos last year, commemorating the sun's closeness ('Green Goddess' dance) and distance (Shadow Cave), and those videos have done very well (relatively speaking) I am happy to say. Tangled Garden might be live by the end of the week - how exciting that prospect is! Months and months of work finally coming to completion.

Ok. It's an 'art video' - not much happens, but..... that's alright. It has its own magic.

Anyway, it is a triptych of 3 long poems, which I did spend 3 days subtitling, so that should work out nicely.

So here are the titles - any suggestions are appreciated!



_____
at the end:

TANGLED GARDEN

written, spoken, performed, videoed and edited
by ©Brenda Clews 2012

brendaclews.com

with special thanks to
Catherine Corelli

'Seraphic Tears':
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/79547