Spring
April 21st, 2006 | Other Projects
Don’t worry, I won’t start inflicting my home movies on you. But this evening I was out walking in the woods and heard a thrush sing, and I got this idea for a short video. Whenever I hear the first thrush of the season, I think of a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Spring,” which my friend Sarah Van Arsdale taught me years ago. It perfectly captures the piercing flutelike song.
So I typed the line into iMovie as separate titles, then imported a short audio clip I’d recorded last year–for which I didn’t even use a mike, I just took my laptop out in the woods. And voilà! It’s like a cartoon, but with a soundtrack instead of drawings.
7 Responses to “Spring”
April 22nd, 2006 at 7:09 am
Talk about rinsing and ringing the ears — so beautiful. Sarah and I once burst into another Hopkins poem, Spring and fall: to a young child, and recited the whole thing in unison. Sometimes I do that one in my head while I swim laps.
April 22nd, 2006 at 10:39 am
That was wonderful and reminds me to step away from my laptop, go outside and experience Spring…things just starting to bloom well this week in Minnesota.
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:09 am
I love this. And I am a huge GMH fan, so it was really nice to wake up to this.
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:59 am
That was beautiful. Thank you.
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Wonnnnnderful. I was hearing a Chuck-will’s-widow the other night (for the second time ever in my life) — had my camera with me, but it was dark and I could only follow the sound. Tells me I should also carry a tape recorder….
April 25th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
i love that you’re into birds! and i think this officially makes you an audio artist. your membership card and new headphones will be arriving by post shortly. welcome.
-tania
May 1st, 2006 at 10:10 pm
damn…
my first visit here, and I run accross this entry, somehow reading (and listening) here first before the most recent entry…
I’m a Montana woman, moved a suburb on Chicago’s northern border ten years ago — grew up in a city that’s roughly half the size of the suburb I’m in now, but we usually lived close enough to the edge that with about fifteen minutes walk I could be in the forest…
now I’m really, really homesick…
this may read as sarcastic, but it isn’t, it’s earnest:
thanks
–random9q