42. New short film: "Hearing the Song" [+Hire me]
"You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly."
42.
I. Hearing the Song
My life seems to require the ‘iterative clarification of an ethos’. If someone were to live my life of the last few decades, this is something I’d tell them in preparation:
“You’ll have to explain what you’re doing - over and over again. Eventually, this will be for the sake of other people - but for the first 95%+ of the time, it will be for yourself. You think you know what you’re doing - but you don’t yet. You think you’ve been clear enough- but you haven’t yet.
At times you’ll give up, because you think it’s impossible - but that’s cope too. You’ll get over it; do the reps. It will become clearer. Eventually it will become clear enough that people other than you can follow along. And as you pull off your side of the handshake, you’ll find others reaching back.”
My latest clarification is my best yet. It is an 11 minute short film called Hearing the Song.
This short tells the story of Hallsong Media, by telling the story of my life. It begins with a quote whose pointed warning has haunted me for about as long as I can remember:
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.— Dune (1965), Frank Herbert
This was a collaborative effort of several months, and is without doubt the best thing I’ve made yet.
More comments and discussion on Twitter. Work-in-progress posted on Patreon.
II. Hire me
For a time, Hallsong is available to hire. I prepared this sheet to give a sense of what’s available:
The sky is the limit - let’s do something cool. Please feel free to pass it on!
III. “Your Highest Light”
I also recently collaborated with Tasshin Fogleman on this 2 minute reel - you could call it a quote reel - inspired by the works of Peace Pilgrim, a walking mystic who hiked the USA in the 20th century:
The challenge as I saw it was to find a musical and visual language to express the wholesome and positive energy we encountered in Peace Pilgrim - a fascinating figure who walked the Earth to find and share her own ‘highest light’. She appears at the end of the reel, and even from that brief clip, I expect you’ll get a sense of who she was.
This was a fun project, aligned with Hallsong’s goal of bringing the past to life.
IV. End
Hallsong continues to seek mission-aligned patrons who are moved by the dream: legendary media drawing inspiration from the story of mankind.
The song of “Hallsong” refers to those complex, contradictory, and manifestly beautiful themes expressed by our ancestors through their greatest works and deeds. This is the heart of culture, which we hope to develop in our time, and want to pass on to the world that will be there long after we’re gone.
If you or someone you know may want to financially support my effort to do this through media,
check out Hallsong’s donation page
say hello at <my first name> at hallsong dot com
or check out my Patreon.
Thank you!
That’s all for now….
— MC