Interface, Setup, and Input: Action!

The day has been much like a river - and not just because of the sky-sliding downpour - and this river has flowed with about as much technology as a brain like mine can take. If I am honest, I am probably trying to grasp too much too fast, and yet, because I have no choice, because the clock is ticking so fast, or digitally morphing, I have to go along with it, swept away downstream, on the jetsam and flotsam of some other, deeper, but not necessarily darker, current. Obliged, exhilarated, I feel all manner of gusts of new information blow into my face like spice. Then, occasionally, just occasionally, I see the overhanging branch of some particularly nasty and complex conundrum coming my way - 'playhead controls' or 'generator pop-up menus' - and just when I've ducked, made it through, something else comes along - 'zooming and scrolling in the timeline' or 'using a breakout box' - and whacks me on the back of the head like a pretty serious bear-hunter from behind. Still, I have probably learned more in the past 48 hours about this one particular craft, which is to say filming and recording and editing again under hostile conditions, than in all of last year. Now, momentarily, I stretch my back and feel the muscle I twinged while running this morning. But it is late evening and because the children are asleep an air of calm impertinence caresses the room. Also, because it is late, I feel like I am slumped somehow on the riverbank. Not as a fish out of water: rather, as a happy, wet spaniel, or drowsy bather, or soaked compendium. At least I can dwell more calmly on the artist now. One of the things I filmed today for example in order to ascertain whether I was 'importing' images correctly was to move in slowly on the artist, zooming with grooming so to speak, as she tackled the last few stages of her now almost completed latest piece. Playing it back again, an hour or so ago, was a pleasure. Aside from the one or two technical glitches, in terms of what I had shot, I was able to study the artist. There was something captivating about the concentration. What was she thinking: that I should stop filming? The chiseled excellence of her small right hand, clutching what she uses to work with, spoke of unsentimental dedication, though that sounds too pretentious for the artist. I tried to play what I shot back again, in slow-motion this time, but this made her look even more intense. I fast-forwarded it: she looked scarily industrious. I froze it: an intimidating picture of ardour. Now, I ask the non-existent members of the editing committee, who would wish ever to edit out that?