By Heart
For every dozen photos of Wombat I post here or to Flickr, there are at least two hundred that don't make the cut. The disparity is even greater with video. Perhaps it's that I'm addicted to the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) and have become trigger happy for a remote that will let me pause, rewind, relive any moment of my life. Wombat wrinkles his nose just so and I find my thumb searching the air for a button that will play it again, play it again, play it again. Have I become techno-dependent or is it just that I think my son is really, really cute? Hmm.
The closest thing to a DLR--a Digital Life Recorder--is a camera. Tell all your friends I told you this: the Number One Must-Have Baby Product, No Question, Hands Down, is a good camera, whatever that means to you. Megapixels, digital zoom, video capture, color filters that make all your photos look like über-precious pastel-tinted posters from the mid-nineties...none of that matters unless you have a camera you're going to not just take with you but take out of your purse and use to take photos of your über-precious baby, and often.
***
When I started blogging back in 2003(!), I started seeing like a writer again for the first time in years; it was like looking at the world through a filter that clarified and crystallized people and thoughts and experiences into words and stories and characters. (I learned long ago and without a doubt that I'm an editor, not a writer, but that doesn't mean I don't still harbor the writerly urge.) When I got my camera back in 2005(!), a similar thing happened. I started seeing differently. Everything was framed in a 3:2 aspect ratio and I squinted a lot, testing depth of field and looking not unlike a one-eyed pirate. ("I love my D.S.L.Arrrrrrgh!")
More recently, I've been seeing the world as a music video. All day long I collect clips and tunes, and at night I go to sleep piecing them all together on the old-style paste-up board of my mind. Ever since I (a) got pregnant and (b) co-opted Simon's point-and-shoot with the video function, I've been recording anything and everything, always in an attempt to piece together the pieces of my life, to create a record that we were here, that we looked like this, that we did this stuff.
I now interrupt this blog post with a NERD ALERT! The word "record," wherever you lay your emphasis, is from the Latin recordaria, which is, re- plus cord-, i.e., cor, meaning "heart" (from the Greek kardia). To record (v.) a record (n.), then, is to commit something to heart so you can play it again, play it again, play it again to your cor's content. Having a record of something enables you to learn it by heart. A record is what's in your heart, in duplicate.
< /nerd>
***
Until I graduated high school, my music library was pitiful--thirty CDs and a handful of tapes (NERD!)--so most of what I knew was from the radio. When I happened on a song I loved, I'd scramble for the Record button on my boombox (full disclosure: we unironically called them "ghetto blasters" in the suburbs of Salt Lake City), and in that way I slowly built up a minor collection of Top Twenty mixtapes--with the first five seconds of each song cut off and the last ten talked over by a d.j.
Because I was getting my music from the radio, when I wanted to learn the words to a song, I couldn't refer to liner notes or to a vast web of interconnected tubes containing all the wisdom of the universe, so what I'd do instead was painstakingly transcribe the lyrics by hand, stuttering through the tape a few seconds at a time--play, pause, play, rewind, play, pause--until I had the song written out in front of me, at which point I'd inevitably discover that I didn't need the lyrics at all anymore because in recording them I'd memorized them, learned them by heart.
Which brings us to my music videos or, rather, my videos cobbled together and then put to music. I've been making them in stolen moments at night after Wombat's asleep and while Simon's at band practice, and oh, to have a spare hour (or six) every night so I could do this more often.
The thing with the videos (or more likely the thing with me) is that they take for-freaking-ever to put together. When I say I wish I had six spare hours at the end of the day, I'm thinking of last Thursday, when I stayed up until 2 a.m. putting final touches on a three-minute montage. But even though I'm still trying to catch up on that sleep missed, I can't say I regret it. Six hours listening to the same background song over and over and over--play, pause, play, rewind, play, pause--can get tedious, but six hours watching clips of my son is time I wouldn't give back. And wouldn't you know it, a funny thing happened at the end of those six hours. When I finally closed down iMovie, put the computer to sleep, and then crawled into bed and shut my eyes, the movie I'd made was still screening in my head; just like with my radio lyrics, I'd rendered my cheat sheet--that music video--obsolete because it had recorded onto my brain.
In short, I don't need this anymore--I know it by heart--but I hope you enjoy it.
I am going to wait to watch the video until I'm at home, because something tells me it's going to make me cry, and if I cry one more time at work this year they may make me sit in a padded cubicle.
I TOTALLY used to tape songs from the radio and transcribe the lyrics! And I still sing all my incorrectly-transcribed lyrics even though in most cases the internet has allowed me to finally see WHAT THE HELL they were saying in "Pump up the Jam" or whatever it might be.
Such clever editing - and such cute material :)
(pisses me off the iMovie 2009 is so rad, I didn't want to upgrade just for some of those cool features, but your video may have convinced me!)
What you describe about how you found music you liked and how you got recordings of it is so what I did. Well, that and I tape recorded CDs that friends let me borrow. I owned 4 CDs and about 10 not-recorded-by-me tapes when I got to college.
I love the video of Wombat. I could watch him all day long. Maybe I will, today. It's amazing how fast they change; it's been less than two months since we've seen him and he's already capable of so much more than when we saw y'all at the end of May.
We also called them ghetto blasters, also totally unironically, in the leafy suburbs of the home counties in England.
And I did that exact same thing with transcribing lyrics from tapes: play, stop, scribble, rewind, play, stop, scribble, rewind. I even purchased a notebook specifically for the purpose of transcribing ALL the lyrics from Bon Jovi's Keep the Faith album. Would it not have been easier to buy the CD (or the tape) and get the liner notes and the lyrics that way? Oh yes, it would have. But this way, it was much more fun.
(PS: Not a writer PSHAW. You're one of the most writerly writers I know.)
Love the nerd alert! Also, what an adorable baby you have there. =)
Great video! You're going to treasure this forever!
JT--It's not one of those. It's totally SFW.
Bellygirl--It's n older version of iMovie: iMovie HD 6.0.3.
NBB--There are "people who can write" and then there are "Writers." I think I fall squarely in the first category.
I love what you said about the blog causing you to see the world like a writer. I'm also an editor, and that's EXACTLY what I'm enjoying about my blog--seeing the world through a writer's eyes. It really helps to look at things like What Happened When Gabriel Was Diaperless as stories, not just a horrible, irritating mess.
Wonderful video. Nice work!
There's nary a moment, with a wee one, that doesn't give a smile. Thanks for sharing so many... smiles and moments, that is.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Except for the writer thing, as I am far from it. The transcribing lyrics, taking unhealthy amounts of pictures and videos and spending way too much time editing them together, yes. Have a great trip in Chicago this week!
That video was awesome, I'm sure when he's grown he'll be very happy that his mommy made music videos of him.
I remember the tapes with songs from the radio. For some reason you always recorded a couple of bad ones and when listening to the tape you had to fast forward to reach the next song and you never managed to get to the gap between songs, but always missed the beginning of the next song, and if you, which I did quite a lot, tried to rewind, you would get the end of the crap song. Oh how I don't miss those days (though I do miss recording my own radio shows on the ghetto blaster and talk over the songs myself).
What a fantastic video! He's such a MOVER! Once he gets that crawling thing figured out, watch out! There'll be no stopping him.
PS: I did the exact same thing with my ghetto blaster too and would spend hours listening to our local station (Z99.9) jumping with delight to hit "record" when Bon Jovi's "Bed of Roses" blared or Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do, I Do It For You" played.
One more reason to think you're great, Leah. :)
What a fantastic video! He's such a MOVER! Once he gets that crawling thing figured out, watch out! There'll be no stopping him.
PS: I did the exact same thing with my ghetto blaster too and would spend hours listening to our local station (Z99.9) jumping with delight to hit "record" when Bon Jovi's "Bed of Roses" blared or Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do, I Do It For You" played.
One more reason to think you're great, Leah. :)
That video made me so warm and fuzzy. And I will totally admit to actually saying "PEEK A BOO!" when you put the cloth over his head.
You guys are just the best and always look like you're having so much fun. Thank you for sharing.
Oh my. That is just TOO precious--I can't even handle it!
charming post. due one decimal where I bicker with it. I am emailing you in detail.
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