For the simple reason that I want to reach as many people as possible with the message behind this post.
Howie Good has a new collection of poems out.
Dreaming in Red.
Stop reading.
Follow this link and buy the book first!
Ok?
Thanks.
This collection 'Dreaming in Red' (Right Hand Pointing, 2011) was especially published for the benefit of the Crisis Center. The Crisis Center is a non-profit agency in Birmingham, Alabama offering suicide prevention, services to victims of sexual assault, day treatment for the indigent mentally ill, and other services.
Appart from the fact that these are bloody marvelous poems, the cause is more than good too.
When reading these poems I immediately wanted to make a few of them into a videopoem.
I had just made this track:
Dreaming in red
and I thought it would be perfect to fit three different poems, combining them into one triptych.
Blue Territory, Ghost Train and The theory of meaningful coincidence.
I asked Howie if I could turn those three into a videopoem called 'Dreaming in Red'
1
Above the bar, a big TV was playing without sound. You kept glancing up at the screen. I followed your empty gaze. A talk-show host, smiling with all his teeth, was shaking hands with a confessed criminal. They fell like two mountain climbers tied together.
2
It was hard to make sense of what was happening. Back then, I still cared about the news. Our blood escaped through every pore.
3
I found a bench overlooking the cemetery. A plaque in the ground described how you had split open like a carcass in a butcher’s shop. I half-closed my eyes in order to see only sky.
1
Run, you yelled, run. Others chose suicide. The only dreams I seem to remember are the nightmares. Barbed wire and concrete, shaded in the summer by young maples.
2
The hit man feels around under the bed. His fingers come away covered with blood. He looks up at the fat priest. I don't think God is interested in me, he says.
3
The train could leave at any moment. No one I ask knows where it's going. She has one foot on the platform, one foot in the air.
Soldiers wore black uniforms, police wore brown. We took refuge in a peeling church full of broken televisions. The skeleton horse poked his head in the door. He possessed the kind of gregariousness I find suspicious. Your real duty, he said, is to save your dream. Tine worlds floated in the shaft of light from the one visible window. Everything else was as I imagined it might be, like the melancholy still life of an old apple by an obscure provincial painter.
The images came almost by themselves.
Main theme; dreams, nightmares...my cup of thee, thank you.
Blurry images of cities, animals being disected, shaky shadows,...
Between attacks of headaches I melted the three poems and the music into these images.
Result:
Dreaming in Red
Words: Howie Good
Concept, camera, editing, treats, voice & music: Swoon
Footage: Laboratory diagnosis of rabies (Prelinger Archives)
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