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Spring

April 21st, 2006 | Uncategorized

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.

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7 Responses to “Spring”

  1. Susan says:
    April 22, 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.

  2. Minnie-sota says:
    April 22, 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.

  3. shoshanna says:
    April 22, 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.

  4. Father Joe says:
    April 22, 2006 at 11:59 am

    That was beautiful. Thank you.

  5. e_journeys says:
    April 22, 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….

  6. Anonymous says:
    April 25, 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

  7. Anonymous says:
    May 1, 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