Shadow People in the Dark

[Fire Monkey]

I have been working of late on music, specifically writing something based around percussion, and I decided it was about time to do some poetry again, so I wrote something inspired by the music I have been working on. It isn't a song since the music has no melody as such, but I added a bit of animation and included the poem in text with it and have included that after the poem.

In the distance
In the darkness
I hear thunder

The night sky sings to me
as the evening brightens it with light

As I walk the city at night
Everywhere people hiding in fright
Afraid of every shadow that they see -
As if they will bite.
But if they'd only just see
The truth of how it should be
The shadow people want
and feel the same
as you and me.
When you see a shadow move,
maybe it's running from you -
Maybe it's just as scared.

In the distance
In the darkness
I hear thunder

The night sky sings to me
as the evening brightens it with light

The danger doesn't come from the dark
But from the hardening of the heart,
That makes us fear the things
we do not know -

We all live in fear
Because we're told to fear
But there is no more to fear
Then there was in Yester-Year

We must stop!

Fear is our true enemy
The thing that won't let us be
The illness we must conquer
if we ever
hope to be free
It's not the strangers or dark
that eats away at our heart
the constant fear of everyone
that different
is what tears us apart

We must break away
Take a stand today
Don't live in fear

In the distance
In the darkness
I hear thunder

The night sky sings to me
as the evening brightens it with light

Copyright April 12, 2014 by Timothy Emil Birch

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Tim,

You are so creative. The people walking around in the dark, giving each other wide berth, is so evocative of our society today. You're right, it isn't the darkness that's scary, it's what we think we perceive there that's the real danger.

I marvel at how you are able to bring so many aspects of art together. I especially enjoyed the sizzling lightning parts. Very awesome! Thank you for sharing this labor of love with us.

Brigid

[Fire Monkey]

I'm glad you liked it - I felt that I had been remiss in my poetry this last while so I thought I should see if I could get some poetic juices going. The lightning seemed like a good thing to go with the synth drums, somehow they just felt like lightning to me so I'm also glad that worked out well I've been enjoying exploring percussive music - I always liked percussion but I only recently started trying to compose a piece that was based around it and it just seemed to suggest the poem to me. I was tempted to try reading the poem and including that but I was having too much stage fright to do a good job of it, maybe if I start with a poem and write the music to go with the poem I will not feel quite so pressured

Hmmm, maybe I should make this a challenge as well - see if the piece inspires anyone else to write a poem. Since it doesn't have a melody as such it leaves a lot of room for style in poetic form that would go well with it or a person could just write something that was inspired by the music but not intended to be read with it.

[Daniel Mark Extrom]

Hi Tim,

Very cool! Love the video and the sound and the whole production!  Amazing. 

Several years ago, Brian Eno of Roxy Music fame, put together a CD in which he performed all or almost all of the instruments, including a lot of interesting percussion aspects.  The music, as I recall, was inspired by poetry (I can't recall whose it was), which was read over the background of the music. Interestingly, the poems were read, not by professional voice-overs or actors, but by ordinary people, to quite an interesting effect.  In fact, I think Brian Eno was interviewed by either Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert about the CD and other music too. 

Anyway, you are on to something here.  I put most of my poems on photographs, simply because, like song lyrics, the people who might actually buy poetry seem to want it included with something else, either visual or sound, or both, and I wonder why more poets don't package their "products" with sound or video or both (and maybe it's because they offend themselves by thinking that what they do is a "product," a sentiment which I understand, but then poets need to recognize that what they do may remain anonymous and unread forever by almost everyone), leading to the poverty that they complain about (me included).

Well done! Maybe you should do  "voice over" attempt. I bet it would be really good.

Dan

[Cory Raymond]

Hi Tim. This is a very cool work. It was rather hypnotic, I thought, watching all those lonely people strolling around, avoiding each other. Then, when the lightning flashed, it got scary.

Great message. I'm impressed by your talent and industriousness. How many hours do you think it took you to put this together?

Cory

[Fire Monkey]

Apr 14, 2014 8:26:52 GMT -6 Daniel Mark Extrom said:

Well done! Maybe you should do  "voice over" attempt. I bet it would be really good.

Dan

I did actually try to do a voice over but I have problems with stage fright the second I try to record my voice. I manage at times by doing multiple attempts and cutting together the parts that I do the best with but I found with this that I was getting far too tongue tied when I was recording and since with the music it has to fit the timing right it was just more than I seemed able to over come. I have, however, come up with an idea for my next attempt at something like this. I shall start with the poem, record it and get it all cleaned up and just the way I want it and then use the poem to get the timing for the music - I think that should work much better.

I'm glad you liked it. I enjoy just writing poetry but doing something like this allows me to express my thoughts in all the creative ways I have at my disposal and that just seems better. I like multi-media things. I enjoy, for example, stage productions with musicians and visual effects and dance and acting combined with songs and/or poetry to create a more complete expression of a story or concept. I guess it started with a love of opera and well done musicals and then a number of animated works that have been done by different bands.

Apr 14, 2014 9:18:52 GMT -6 Cory Raymond said:

Great message. I'm impressed by your talent and industriousness. How many hours do you think it took you to put this together?

Cory

Well, the poem itself took a little over an hour to write but I started with the percussive piece which took me an evening to compose - likely about 5 hours or so - and then, having the rhythms in my head, the poem came together fairly easily. Next I spent about another 3 or 4 hours with audio editing software to get the sound balance right in the music - making some parts louder and others softer and such and the animation [including the text] itself took me about 24 hours I guess - believe it or not, the lightning was actually one of the harder parts, although once I had it figured out it was fairly quick to draw. The trouble was getting something that looked right So the whole project took about 34 hours, give or take

I kept the animation simple - the background doesn't change, just the people and since they are just silhouettes, they were fairly quick to do

I'm happy that people like what I have created. I know it isn't going to be to everyone's taste of course, and that's ok, but it is nice to know that I have achieved what I set out to do. Now I'll have to see if I can manage some other sorts of things I'd like to do something surreal but I have to come up with both a poem and compose the right piece of music to go with it - something a little more cheery. The animation takes more time generally [unless it is REAL simple] but once I know what I'm drawing, it is the easiest part of the whole thing.

[Cory Raymond]

Thanks for the info, Tim. I'm really very impressed by this. I don't think I could create anything like it, even if I had several years to do it. Bravo! I look forward to your new approach and the resulting final product. Cory

[Fire Monkey]

You never know - there was a time I would have said the same thing, but the trick is always to find your own strengths and interests and work on those to perfect them as much as you can. I think most people can do more than they believe they can if they try but it has to be something that really captures your interests as well as playing to your strengths. After that it's just a matter of not giving up. It took me a long time to reach the point that I was able to even start to do something like this and I have a lot of failed attempts behind me which I learned from. I can't remember who it was, but I saw an interview with some singer years ago and the interviewer asked them what it was like being an over night success and the singer looked at him and smiled and said that it had only taken him 20 years to become an over night success because he started when he was a kid and all the other kids were out playing ball and he was practicing in the basement. I think that sums up the real secret - if something is important enough to us for us to keep trying when it seems like we can't do it then eventually we succeed and while it always looks like it was easy, that's only because others don't get to see the hard work that came before

So while you might never do this - I believe that you will succeed in doing whatever you really want to do, the creativeness is in you. I know that sounds like a cheesy platitude but I really do believe it and I think I'm proof of it.