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the lives of songs

She told me she tried to find this album I used to put on when we were hud­dled in the dark­ness. The prob­lem was that she could only remem­ber the cov­er, and it was after we stopped talk­ing for the third time or some­thing cause oth­er­wise she would have asked.

Then she was in Chapters one day. This book of best albums of the 2000s fell down, and there it was, Ágætis byr­jun, open at the page. “What are the chances?”, she asked me.

Sigur Rós Ágætis byrjun

I used to think of her lis­ten­ing to the songs I gave her with anoth­er guy and grow jeal­ous. But I could nev­er say I did­n’t have my own mem­o­ries asso­ci­at­ed with that album, lying between a wall and warm body on a bed swollen with cov­ers in New Jersey. I watched Jón Þór Birgisson sing into the pick­ups of his gui­tar, his ethe­re­al voice gen­tly mak­ing the strings trem­ble, in a sum­mer romance so long ago.

That was my intro­duc­tion to Sigur Rós, and in the same way I passed this album on to her. It made me feel so vul­ner­a­ble to be next to her in those moments (whether she real­ized it or not). Every time it came on was an emo­tion­al flash­back, a short-cir­cuit to this part of my past about which I’ve told so few.

I used to hope she kept the songs I gave her to her­self, and that she did­n’t use them to woo anoth­er guy the way I had always tried to with her. Perhaps I was a lit­tle pos­ses­sive about my music and some­what judg­men­tal on who I deemed to be deserv­ing enough to hear it. Eventually I real­ized that it’s not fair of me to feel that way. She had shared so many songs with me in turn, giv­ing me as much as I’d giv­en to her, and I’ve since passed those songs on to oth­ers.

Now I won­der who else will even­tu­al­ly expe­ri­ence these songs, and what mem­o­ries of their own they’ll have when they hear them.

Sarah and Michael — Wedding Day

Interested in hir­ing me? Check out my port­fo­lio site.

I’ve been bleed­ing for a big project, some­thing to real­ly throw myself into. Luckily, wed­dings are as big as they come, and at 70.43 GB of footage tak­en, this wed­ding was the biggest by far.

It was also the first Italian wed­ding I’ve expe­ri­enced, and there was noth­ing more inter­est­ing than observ­ing the cus­toms. It’s a very phys­i­cal cul­ture, with lots of hug­ging, kiss­ing, and firm pats on shoul­ders. And some­how every­one is a nat­ur­al dancer. How did every­one know to hold hands in equal­ly sized cir­cles and start mov­ing in the same direc­tion? How did every­one know when to stop hold­ing hands and start clap­ping1? How did you every­one known to step in to touch the groom and moth­er at the same time?

This is a per­fect exam­ple of how video takes over the lim­i­ta­tions of still pho­tog­ra­phy. A lot of cama­raderie and inti­ma­cy and con­fi­dence only come out when motion is involved, because it’s all in how peo­ple move and inter­act. Trying to cap­ture a bride eat­ing cake out of her cleav­age just isn’t pos­si­ble with a sin­gle frame.

This was a very spe­cial project for me, and I put so much love into this film, from the cam­era-work to the edit­ing to the grad­ing to the music. Over three hours of footage was care­ful­ly stripped away to cre­ate this five minute sto­ry. Every moment mat­ters, every frame counts.

Sarah and Mike are so hap­py with the final prod­uct that they’ve now decid­ed to send a DVD of this video out to all the guests in lieu of thank-you cards. For a wed­ding of 450 peo­ple, this is no small con­sid­er­a­tion. When I first met them, I knew they were going to be a fan­tas­tic cou­ple to work with because they were super nice and made me feel very com­fort­able. They also gave me full cre­ative con­trol, which is always the most impor­tant thing for me as an artist.

Production notes beneath the cut

  1. It remind­ed me of this time I saw an opera in Budapest. When the cur­tain came down and the audi­ence start­ed applaud­ing, every­one even­tu­al­ly clapped in uni­son and did­n’t speed up. North Americans all clap in an amor­phous din, but over in Hungary it’s like they were all clap­ping to the tim­ing of a con­duc­tor. [↩]

dry spell

I was spring clean­ing and found a box of con­doms due to expire this sum­mer. What’s the lifes­pan of con­doms kept out of the sun­light and in a cool place?

Five years.

Which pret­ty much means I haven’t been in a rela­tion­ship in as long, cause I’ve always shied away from any­thing pure­ly phys­i­cal. Sex is very men­tal for me. Someone once told me she thought we were sex­u­al­ly com­pat­i­ble, but I nev­er felt like we were par­tic­u­lar­ly well-matched. We sim­ply loved each oth­er on a very pro­found lev­el, and that kind of inti­ma­cy and con­nec­tion is what made the sex so good. Without that, it’s not even worth it.

Maybe it’s just my inter­ver­sion that’s lead­ing me to think that no sex is bet­ter than bad sex.

The last thing I did was hold hands with some­one after she jumped into bed with me, com­plain­ing she could­n’t sleep. She had these tiny hands, with slen­der fin­gers. It was nice. But I could­n’t bring myself to take it any fur­ther cause I could­n’t see myself with her.

Luckily, I can do dry spells. Easily. Considering I had a 15-year one until I lost my vir­gin­i­ty. Now I’m at an age where peo­ple want to intro­duce me to some­one, and some­times they’ll add, “…but she has a kid”, when try­ing to sell me on the idea.