My Fantasy

Aside from watching docs all weekend, I've been brooding about how to approach another project.

At some point, if I can get jacked up for it, I want to read "The Talent Poems" and edit in some stills by RP Thomas (I wrote the poems based loosely on some of his images) and perhaps some video.

Publish it at YouTube, of course.

But my bigger fantasy goes beyond this.  I can see the work shot as a live-action sketched film, which is my nomenclature for a series of scenes that the poems conjure in my head.

The poems only vaguely suggest a story, yet they're related as glimpses (or takes) of a fictitious community with a possible relativity lingering at the edges.

(Alas, in some circles this is known as artlessness or diminished craft, but in my mind is likely "the best I can offer.")

With minimal dialogue (as written sparsely in the poems) the action would carry each take (or scene) as a self-contained motif that would have more in common with Expressionism (in painting or film) than mainstream moviemaking.

Yet there would exist the challenge of making each take whole, not so much as to create a linear narrative or compelling story, but to give each scene an impetus for open-ended emotion and context.

In other words, my group of actors would remake the poems, each according to the depth of his/her understanding--each poem as a short story, if you will, tangentially related to the whole.

It's an old-fashioned idea, but dammit it's time for a revival!


TS