Thursday, May 2, 2013

Grace Prompt

The sublime also happens, if we are lucky, at various points in our life. We find ourselves at the outer edge of our knowing, awake and joyous. For a fleeting second, perhaps, or for a longer period, we feel like we have a touch with grace. Share your moment of transcendence.

I have viewed some of life through a video camera – a different kind of presence. This is not video in hand for family moments of social media rather it is video with intent to reveal stories. These opportunities to see up close-up or distant things I would not otherwise see in nature: a bee’s attraction to a flower, a butterfly among pumpkins, the sun setting through a nose printed window and dandelions dispersing into flight; common things through a less common lens. These moments can claim sublime in their pure joy and can now be ordinary for many with phone cameras in hand.

Then there is me and technology and a journey of re-seeing trapping my focus for hours and days in order to eventually share seconds or minutes of the gathered and remixed conversations, timeline images and an occasional glimpse of life I've captured in video: A head falling to restful sleep, a smirk of understanding, an energetic child declaring “I know” with hand vigorously waving. I smile, I recut, I cry, I fade, I decide, I overlay, I find the exposure, saturation, light of knowing with a more concise truth. This experience holds meaning for me as I do it to create accessible meaning for others about our shared existence and within this process meaning for existence.  Others pray, I contemplate the edit. 

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