The hovering hawk, Has a stillness inherent, I can only dream.
I’m sitting at home. A lamp on in the corner of the room, even though it’s daylight out. The clouds are heavy. I stare down at that bright ubiquitous rectangle most of us have these days. This illuminated hunk of metal and glass, thumb casually flicking the front, eyes receiving, brain doing god-knows-what with it all. Something’s not right.
I get up, head to the porch, heave on my boots, pulling the laces tight, sling my autumn coat over my shoulders and walk out the door.
———
There before me an avenue of green and gold. The wind gently shaking the branches, which coax me onwards. Suddenly a shock of yellow, bright buds dancing in front of the washed out heavens. A waltz of dead-bird’s feathers, caught in the damp, knotted grass. The raging sea crashes. But then a bird, the bird?, hovers on the wind, held aloft by the vertical draft that moments before smashed into the cliff below. Head unmoving, wings skilfully and unerringly twisting, bending. Eyes steady on the ground. Not like me, my clumsy hands shake as I try to push myself closer, my eye flitting from screen to scene, desperate to keep track, to predict. Failing. And then the sea crashes again. A peninsula surrounded.
———
Watching it all back on the camera’s screen, it’s grainy, it’s shaky, it’s ambient. The rudimentary white balance is off, the blown out skies bleed, the contrast is glorious in its shoddiness. The film sings roughly from this tiny LCD display.
Attaching cable-to-adapter-to-laptop, I see the stillness of the opening image and click record. There’s no sound. The avenue is there, wavering, shimmering, closing in and opening up.
I walk away.
Some things take time. And anyway, I hate sitting at the computer, especially recently, so why do it? I bought this chunk of ‘old tech’ to allow me to edit in camera, in the moment and across a single file. I don’t want to fiddle about in post, stitching together abstracted individual files, rendering, exporting, retrofitting narratives, or just overthinking. The film’s intention was formulated before I walked out the door, it was gathered and built, and now it’s realised.
But what next? I open my dust-covered YouTube channel, brush off the upload button and press it. But why? Is there anything about this short silent film that merits its release into public space (albeit virtual and ostensibly ephemeral)? Possibly not. But personally, it does give me a new perspective on it, in the same way a painter will step back from their canvas to see the whole thing and to gain a different perspective. Things just look different, particularly to the creator. But there’s something else. Something hopefully less selfish. The desire to share. After all, is there any point in leaving it in the camera for someone to find and chuck out after i’m dead? I think not. I want to share this with the world, the universe, even if no one ever actually watches it. At least it’s out there. It can’t be seen otherwise, and it’s never been designed to be private. It’s not a home movie, a memory to hold onto, even if this medium was built for that.
———
So here it is. There may be more. I hope so. But for now, here this is, alongside whatever this short essay might be - mission statement, artist’s statement, manifesto, or quite possibly something far less grand than any of that.