Wake up...Where am I???

[diannet]

Hi all, I had an idea that might get the creative juices flowing??? Imagine waking up in a strange place to the place you went to sleep. It could be a different world, time...anything and write a poem.

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Dianne,

Well, this sounds like a good idea. We definitely need something here to offer a bit of inspiration.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

I'll get to work on mine!

[SweetSilverBird]

Hi everyone.

I"m still horribly blocked, but I want to show that I'm trying. this is just for fun, and doesn't even deserve a name, but I think it follows the criteria that Diannet asks for.. if not to rigidly.

MIss everyone. Anyways.. here is my answer to this fun challenge.


Smoke curls in scented whirls around my pen.
I listen as the melody of time,
eases my heart and calls me back again,
through lyrics caught in song and thoughtful rhyme.

.. and suddenly it is that I am home!
not now, but in some stranger time that shone
I laughed and loved as brightly as a poem
and I lived the scenes with every changing song.

I wonder how it is that I recall
something in the past before it's happened?
Like nothing follows any rules at all.
Thoughts like these are nothing more than maddened.

and if into this mystery you'd poke..
I would suggest you check into that smoke!

[Brigid Briton]

Hiya Deb,

Nice job! I guess most of us are suffering from some sort of systemic blockage or the other. I'm glad you worked through yours.

Here's my entry:


Space Oddity 2013

Slowly I awake from the anesthesia,
my eyes unsure that they’re ready
to take in the new reality
of this world,

where we have all been preserved,
each in our own cocoon,
travelers in some once-future
and now long-past
Space Odyssey 2001,

aware only dimly
of each other
or the strangers who
tip-toe in,
then tip-toe out,
after a cursory survey of

the modern mummies silently
waiting,
for the minute, the hour, the day
when we have the energy
to write again.

[diannet]

Hi Deb and Brigid,

Great entries...Deb I certainly need to poke around in the smoke... great fun poem...and I think lately I've been a zombie too Brigid. Ethan was sick and then I of course had my turn and just feeling a little more like I'm in the land of the living. I have something swirling around but couldn't get the energy to write.

Thank you both for responding now I better get myself together and see if I can put pen to paper.

Good on ya girls...

[Fire Monkey]

I hope to be posting something here soon - as it happens, I have been working on a very major project for quite a while and I am almost finished the opening which, oddly enough, fits this challenge. So although I had not intended to share any of it until the whole project was done, this is like an omen, a sign that I should share the first part of my project - so as soon as it is finished, I shall.

[SweetSilverBird]

Brigid, I am completely enchanted by this surreal dream! It is like an old 60s style, science fiction movie, that you see at the drive-in. ==Only we are the actors in that movie, and it's getting mysterious...

Wonderful new slant. You always bring it back to us- your little brood of poets. It's nice to be loved. <hug>

[diannet]

Inside the Diorama

I woke to the sounds
of a gently gurgling
brook
while I rubbed my eyes
an egret sidled
alongside me
and froze
like a statue
watching

I dared not move
his stare
intense
captured the moment
and I wondered
was he
confused

suddenly
his head shot forward
he pulled back
with a fish
that he swallowed
and then
continued
on his way

somewhere above me
came a chuckle
I sheltered my eyes
from the bright morning sun
a smiling face
of a Chinese man
looked down upon me
from the rock
on which he sat fishing
“he only wants the little fish...
not great big whale”

“ha, ha, yes,” I said
rising to my feet
“I wonder...could you tell me where I am?”
“Ah you’re right where you’re supposed to be
at this moment in time.”

a strange quiet
was apparent behind
the whisper of water
and it was as if
I could see for miles
yet everything seemed
so close
the man saw I was puzzled

“You’re very lucky,
a trip for yourself
here
to every place
both near and far
that so many never see
a precious moment
lost in time
that quiet space
between”

and the egret, stationary
plotted his
next course

[Fire Monkey]

It seems you have sparked a new stream of creativity with this challenge, Diannet. I enjoyed all the poems so far but hope there will be more. As for my own offerings - I have a bit more to do before I have something to post. It almost seems like cheating since it is the start to a project I began ages ago rather than a poem written in response to the challenge, but then I remember that this is not a competition but rather a touching of minds and a sharing of our creative visions. I know I love being able to see what others here are doing and I always find that the sharing of the things others create helps to energize me so that I too can create. For that, I thank you all and I sincerely hope that I too can add to your creative fervor in some small way.

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Dianne,

The next question, of course, is "Who am I?" The narrator could be a human, or perhaps a talking creature of some sort or the other. The poem has a very "zen" quality to it. (Or is it a "Yoda" quality? Or are they one and the same?)

Whatever, and wherever, it sounds like a good place to be!

[diannet]

Hi Fire Monkey, I look forward to seeing what you have come up with... must say I am intrigued.

Brigid, I do think zen equals Yoda... but being as Star Wars is such a favourite in this house possibly Yoda. ;D

[Fire Monkey]

I have had a bit of a delay - had to do some re-working of things - but I hope to be able to post it soon. Hard to say if it will live up to expectations or not but I'll do my best.

[Fire Monkey]

OK - I promised to post more when it was ready and so I have updated the video here.

OK, it took a while longer than I had expected but you know how it can be, I thought I was almost done and then I ended up going back and changing some things.

Anyway, this is actually the beginning to a much larger project that I have been working on and I hadn't intended to share it until I had the full project done, but then this challenge appeared and it just seemed like a 'sign' that maybe I should share the opening since it does fit, more or less, with the challenge.

So I wanted to explain about it first - the project I am working on is a story told in a combination of music and art and words. I have 72 minutes of music which I have written for it, this is just the first piece which is 7:45 minutes long, and then I am doing art to illustrate the story and adding words. Now music is a vary individual thing and what one person likes another might not so I thought I'd mention that if you find the music in this piece to be annoying, the dialogue, which is at least technically poetry, is all subtitled so you can turn the sound off and still get all of the words. If I sound nervous it's because I am. I have never tried anything on this scale before and so I am not sure how it is turning out - I suppose I have a touch of stage fright as it were. Anyway, I'll shut up and let you see for yourself. I recommend viewing it full screen [click on the bottom right hand corner of the YouTube player to go to full screen.]

I have updated the video as I have art completed for the second piece of music now - since I don't want my YouTube channel to have all sorts of fragments of the project I have chosen to simply replace the video I posted here with the updated video which now has the first two pieces of music - Part 1 will have one more piece of music which is just over 8 minutes and then I'll be starting of Part 2, but as you might imagine, it will be a while before that is done.

If you have already watched the first piece and don't want to see it again, just start at about 7:44 minutes.

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Tim,

I love the whole story about how you were already working on this when Dianne issued her challenge. I also love that I had only a few seconds earlier realized that my second cup of coffee had grown cold and I was about to get a refill when I started watching your video.

It's awesome having these mysterious connections.

I loved this. It was riveting and I didn't refill my coffee until after I'd watched the whole thing. I just took a nice swig of hot coffee and I can attest that drinking cold coffee can lead to all sorts of problems!

This grips the watcher and I think the music is an integral part of it, adding to the sense of confusion and displacement being felt by the protagonist. I almost missed the final "I can hear you" but that was a masterstroke, because I can hear you.

What are you going to do with this? What do you do with all of your creations? (Other than posting them here which will give you an audience of close to zero). I think that you are tremendously talented and hope that you do have some additional place where more people can have access to what you do.

Thanks so much for "daring" to share this with us. You don't have anything to feel nervous about...this is great!

[Fire Monkey]

Thanks, I hope the rest of the project goes as well or better. I have all 72 minutes of music written and recorded already - that was the first step and it took over 200 hours to create the concept collect - it takes time to compose a piece of music but it takes a lot more to compose a set of pieces that are intended to fit together to tell a story. The next piece in the project is only about a third the length of this one, though I'm not sure at the moment if it will be able to stand alone or not - we shall see.

As for what I do - well, of course they are on YouTube so people can find them there, not that this adds a lot of views, and I post on my Facebook page. I think there is a tiny flame of hope that some day someone with the right sorts of connections will stumble across my work and become interested in it but I don't really expect it - though it would be so wonderful if one of my pieces were to go viral - still, the most important thing is that people I know see them and enjoy them. Mostly for me I am creating a legacy - something that will say a bit about who I was once I am gone [which means I have a lot of time left to build up the collection I hope]

Once it is done, this project will tell the story of one man's battle with his own mind - in case you didn't guess [at this point in the whole story it is not intended to be obvious yet] the man in the bed and the protagonist are one and the same - it's just that he hasn't figured that out yet. He isn't being ignored - he simply can't be seen or heard because as the doctor said, he is trapped inside his head. Since this was not actually written as a stand alone piece, there are things which may not yet be clear - after all, I have almost an hour left to show the viewer what is happening. Next piece we meet the voice from the end and things start getting clearer ;D

[Brigid Briton]

I think it was pretty clear that the two characters (the one in the bed and the conscious one) were one and the same. I thought that from the first, but when the people came in and "ignored" the speaker, it was definitely confirmed.

I think what happens is that we sometimes get so close to our work that we don't really know if what we intended is clear or not. In this case, I'd say it was very clear.

That "I can hear you" after a long silence was eerie and, I think, the first step towards integration of the two parts of this man's personality.

It reminded me a little bit of some of Alfred Hitchcock's dramas, mysterious, with a touch of irony and surprise. The viewer keeps asking, "What's going on here?" until all is made clear (usually with a twist) at the end.

I could just see it all filmed in the black and white common when he created his "Alfred HItchcock Presents" back in the fifties (which is still shown here).

And, to be compared to Alfred Hitchcock isn't too shabby at all! Good work, Tim.

[diannet]

Firemonkey this is terrific. That music was very eerie, and I could certainly tell the two people were one in the same character. There's so much I like about it, it reminded me of some of those science fiction movies from the 50's and 60's, I just love them. I watched the Blob not long ago yet again. But that music reminded me of Alice Cooper, his Welcome to my Nightmare...it has that great eerie feeling. I was completely hooked and drawn into this characters dilemma.

I loved the detail in the animation, especially the hospital room, it's really well done. It's obvious you really enjoy creating these animations, it comes through. Also it fits this challenge brilliantly...I look forward to the second part because I need to find out what has been going on... ;D

CAN YOU HEAR ME???

[Fire Monkey]

Brigid: you are right that when one works on a project for a long time it gets hard to know if you are communicating or not because of course you KNOW what it is all about and the longer you work on it the more what you know tends to work its way into what you show [if you catch my meaning]

You are also right that the final words do lead into the start of the character integrating himself though there are twists and turns ahead.

Diannet:I can't comment much on Alice Cooper since I have always been more of a Uriah Heep and Pink Floyd fan but I'd say that the roots of this piece of music is in that general ball park. I'm glad you enjoyed it, over the course of the whole production there are a number of different sorts of musical forms to fit the things I was trying to express - some tend to the harder side of rock and some lean to a softer sort. I even have a slow piano piece later in the mix.

I do enjoy creating things like this although it is sometimes hard to stick to a big project when you are unsure if it will work out or not - it's hard to spend hundreds of hours working on something that might be a flop and no good way to judge it until after you put the time in. For that reason it is nice to get this feedback as it tells me that it is worth continuing the project. In this case I would anyway because it is important to me on a personal level and also I hope that by doing this I will be able to find the energy for a few other really big projects.

And yes - I hear you ;D

[Fire Monkey]

Just wanted to be sure people knew I have updated the video for Thunderspeak - it now has the second piece of music and the art, words and story in general that goes with it.