Wednesday 2 April 2008

Testing truthfully under real circumstances

It is perhaps within the correct spirit that I should be using images of the artist and our children as material for testing how best to do my work in the war zone.

Shot 1: Our 8-year-old daughter dances by the fireplace while our son sews his stitched sculptural man.
Shot 2: Our daughter types a list of her favourite books on the laptop: the list reads like a poem.
Shot 3: Our daughter's fingers type at the keys with improbable speed.
Shot 4: The artist is in the foreground on the bright red sofa listening to Bob Dylan's Workingman's Blues #2 on headphones while our daughter continues typing in the background.
Shot 5: The artist is dressed in grey and works on the detailed grey surface of her latest piece.
Shot 6: The artist's hand fills the frame as she crafts away at the detail.
Shot 7: Our daughter eats tomato and mozzarella while reading again on the laptop screen what she has just written.
Shot 8: Our son eats a bowl of soggy cornflakes with the TV screen in the background showing a weather report.
Shot 9: The artist tests a wireless microphone, twirling, mocking, smiling, talking, dancing.
Shot 10: A silver-coated Buddha sits on a lace-patterned black bookshelf between eleven novels and biographies.
Shot 11: The artist's husband looks and talks to camera while testing the wireless microphone and remote commander with self-mockery and a zoom out.
Shot 12: Our son and daughter are sitting on the bright red sofa as the camera zooms in and they whisper into a concealed microphone all the things they want to do when they visit their grandparents and cousin in the foothills.
Shot 14: Side-angle of the artist still working away at her piece.
Shot 15: Our son yawns and stares to camera.
Shot 16: Our son explains his stitched and sculpted man.
Shot 17: Our son and daughter dance again by the fireplace.
Shot 18: Caption
Shot 19: End credit.
Shot 20: Our son still stitching.

A well-known teacher across the ocean in the city of the scraped skies once described acting to his students as living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Perhaps the above is simply about me testing truthfully under real circumstances.

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