Shift (a Time Machine for a Longer Thought)

Mel here. Last week was insane. This year feels insane. Last year was the kind of insane you couldn’t describe to someone who lived through it without them thinking you were insane. Sometimes I wonder — if everything is insane, what happens to the supposedly sane baseline insanity gets checked against?

Anyway, I needed a moment off the merry-go-round for my own sake. I started thinking about perspective and how hard it is to shift from a certain perspective to another sometimes, despite knowing there is always another way to look at everything… This video is what I made while meditating on that idea.

The first song is a three-min. public domain piece called “Florida Folksong – Halkiticos, Sousta“. (Someone said it sounds like the “Virginia Reel”?) It was recorded as part of a program in the 1940s where old folk songs were being collected so they wouldn’t get lost to time. I added some archive footages to make a little film for it. Something about the perceived pace of things these days… continuously spinning in a little circle at a set tempo without much if any thought at who wrote the song, why does it keep being played, why do people keep dancing, why at this speed? So many questions go unanswered as the people just keep dancing to the same tune over and over in a loop without ever asking why.

But the second song is the exact same music, only this time it has been stretched out to last an hour as an ambient soundscape. In that hour, I considered the natural cycles underneath the unnatural ones, and how even though some moments may seem very dark or uncertain, it never stays that way for long and certainly not forever, a concept we only think is fathomable. And while we’re distracted by a signal of shiny things constantly pinging at the surface, there are so many little things happening all the time that are like worlds inside worlds where time begins to morph into the unfathomable.

If you were to take just that last hour of sound and moments out and set it end to end on a new timeline, it would loop endlessly. The new hour is like a time machine for a longer thought.

Today is my birthday. Even though something without words isn’t something I’d normally share on this channel, I thought because it’s my birthday and for the people who can appreciate a break right now, I would share this with you.

Much love.