Here was another artistic challenge from poet friend P.B.W. Images from a journey, a trip, a moment again in time. How was I to express it in images and sound? He had sent this as a textual poem sometime before, but now I had the author reading it in a sound file. The challenge was on, as the imagery in my head was becoming clearer. I went through photographs, locating things that “matched” the lines of the poem. Actually, nothing matches them, but the images should compliment the words. I could not really find anything visually that automatically complimented the last stanza of this open verse poem, so I had to imply something that was both seen and not seen, almost like a harmonic, a reflection.
After assembling a good silent version, I loaded the resulting video on my phone and brought that over to the keyboard where I treated the visual sequence like a silent movie, and I accompanied it, doing two versions when the first version failed to show up on the cloud. Everything was then refined and coordinated. I shared this with P.B.W. who offered a pair of minor suggestions which were well-observed. I worked on those until “l’Hermitage” looked and sounded as it was supposed to - then another review, and we were done.
The original post and poem is here.
Collaboration with a Poet 3