Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Kirk/Spock: "now is a ship steering for dream" (e.e. cummings)

My latest vid-- a 1:04 minute love note, a bit of frippery, inspired by e.e. cummings's little gem:
now is a ship
which captain am
sails out of sleep
steering for dream




The choice of music--Hungarian Dances No. 5 in G Minor--was inspired by my current work on Slovakia. (I had thought this song was one of Antonín Dvořák's, in fact, but it is by Johannes Brahms.)

Notes from my youTube description box:

A wink and a nod to Kirk & Spock's early days. The captain wants his fascinating first officer to understand him better, so he shares this poem, which he interprets as being about his love for his ship.
. . . But when Spock checks with the ship, the answer isn't quite what was expected. (Can she read her future? Or is a certain Vulcan putting words in her mouth?).

The screencaps--mostly from the pilot episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before"--are from the big-hearted folks at TrekCore.com. The scenes of ship lighting appear in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

(You know if you want to watch a video on its youTube site, you can click on the "youTube" icon on the bottom right of the screen.)

9 comments:

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo said...

Perfect music choice...and E E Cummings, another classics graduate...

Once again, you seem to be implying something about Kirk and Spock...I wonder what it is....

You must keep making these little films, they are great fun!

Fresca said...

Nooooo! Don't tell me that about e.e. cummings! Damn. I was so proud, I swear, that I had gotten away from remixing Star Trek & Classics, for a change... and now it seems I choose the same thing, even without knowing it.
Love is like that I guess.

Implying something? I know not of what you speak...

Thanks for the encouragement--they are a ton of fun to make too! BUT, they are insanely, perhaps surprisingly, time consuming.
(You probably can guess, since you put music together.)
This one-minute vid took me most of the past two days--and I stayed up half the night, working on it.
Not that I mind. Especially fun this time was trying to match the dance beats here to images--it was like that little hand-held toy where you try to get the b.b. balls to run a course without falling into the holes.
But if only this paid...

Jennifer said...

Ah, I thought you were going to expand on your "such small hands" reference from earlier! But Kirk's love poem to the Enterprise is delightful, as is her "response" (yes, I wonder if Spock is taking creative liberties or if the Enterprise is merely a very good reader of relationships!)

Somehow it makes me happy to know cummings was a classics scholar. I was just reading about how an artist has to know the classical rulkes of an art before they can break them, and cummings came to mind. I wondered if he was classically trained but was...too lazy to go look, so your blog is serendipitous for me!

WF: enormiza, which sounds like Kirk's feelings for his ship. :)

Anonymous said...

My favorite things about this film are the way the music fits the action and the facial expressions. You really let loose with this one, Fresca! It may not pay well but the emotional rewards are priceless, no?

Fresca said...

JEN: Good catch!!!
cummings just wandered into that blog title, "such small hands." See, while I was gathering images of hands in art history, I was saving them in a draft I titled "small hands" purely for utilitarian reasons.
But that rang such a bell, I finally realized where it was from--(the place I know the poem from is "Hannah and her Sisters," though I've loved e.e. since childhood)--so officially titled the post with the reference.

Then I got reading cummings again, and found this little gem, which of course is not really about a ship at all, but about "now"--still, in my sotrytelling world, Kirk with his "enormiza" ego sees himself in it (as I see myself in him...).

Is it the ship? Is it Spock? Is anyone bluffing, or do they really know the score? This all is ambiguous--truly, I don't know either! It's early days...
(Seems I am slowly filling in the backstory for myself, through these vids. Not that I have a cunning plan--they just evolve!)

POODLE: Thanks! It was indeed pricelessly rewarding to put this together--the music and movement and, as always, the astonishing expressiveness of Bill--and it's nice that people are enjoying it. (Already 101 views on youTube, though I count for probably a quarter of them.)

WORD VERIFICATION: "jawto" = phonetic spelling of Giotto = I am a great artist! Heh, heh, heh...

Fresca said...

P.S. Re cummings and Classics: Yeah, I've been thinking it makes sense cummings studied Classical languages, as they really take you into the innards of grammar-- helps, so you trust "which captain am" will be understandable.

momo said...

J'adore!
and here is another kirk linky for you:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/02/meanwhile-union-president.html

deanna said...

Ah, wonderful movement and expressions, in a "slide show"! Perfect with the music. I like Kirk's youthful grin. And his last sentence. Great.

(my word verification's "sitifull": that's me today at home)

Fresca said...

Thanks for the link, Momo. It interests me that 60s Star Trek is still such a cultural referent that people use it in contemporary political discourse...

You got it, Deanna: "youthful grin"! Wow, was he a baby boy in that first pilot...