Bologna in Lettere - The Violence of Sadness

City Hawk - feature length authorial videopoem

City Hawk - original and spoken word versions

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Statement: My first feature length authorial videopoem can be seen via the link just below. It’s almost five years old —  which, given how much my cameras have changed, feels more like twenty. 

The original project, entitled City Hawk, was based entirely on footage and stills shot in Toronto - either around the neighborhoods of St. Lawrence and Regent Park (the latter not yet gentrified) — and along the Don Valley.

The latter footage is the basis of the video.  Wanted to capture something of the tension between poor and wealthy neighborhoods, as well as the general excitement/ tension of urban life.

Urban life has its advantages: its energies are real. But it lacks meditativeness ... at least, unless you’re willing to accept the poverty that results from a “chronically peaceful mind.” Meditativeness can only be consistently found in natural spaces; have found this living in Toronto. My wife and I find it living near a nature reserve in Seoul.

And a very recent spoken word version of City Hawk is also below via YouTube. It’s much shorter - but I couldn’t have made that first project without all the footage, the music, and the sturm und drang of editing on a wheezy laptop.

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From my collection of ambient and authorial movies. My focus is on videopoetry; however, I work in other genres and art forms as well.

Text: 

CITY HAWK

August 21.15

Original authorial videopoem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkDpdJzjkq4

Spoken word: https://youtu.be/1z1JnoFC6q4

I

The towers are

Flat to the touch

And the clouds are cotton

In blue clay.

The towers are phat

With money

And ambition

And steel –

Monoliths, weeds

Sprouting from dirty gardens

While a squawking raptor watches.

II

Flat reaches –

It disdains its poor before,

Its dimly-remembered door.

The people here

Don't understand

All that,

And so they walk happily

Under Flat.

III

But in the hard furrows

Growth

Goes down.

Renovations

Are generally

Built on souls,

While new weeds

Raised in the pyschic garden

Of Farmer Dough

Spread wildly.

IV

But there's a temporary okay

When you know how to escape...

It's the flower road,

The trail,

That will, today,

Save you.

V

These trails

Are specific

But their origin

Is general.

And the perception of them

Is based on ears,

Eyes,

Skin.

VI

All skies fly

But humans

Must portion out their stretch;

It is the clouds

That are solid

And the machinery

That will wilt.

VII

The monoliths

Refuse to sway –

That is their way.

But the green in the city

Busts out

And is regular.

Weeds prefer to love

Messily,

But any flower part will do

Including containers of brick,

The matrix kind.

The towers rule

Like government

But they have no stem,

No voice.

They are dependent

On the smallness

Of life.

VII

Asphalt is the original Flat

But it is just a servant now,

Possibly a beggar.

The more Some Thing is ignored

The more it resembles the natural....

The plant world,

The animal

And the zone

Of anonymous humans.

Poverty is grey

But grey precedes brown

And brown precedes blue.

Even concrete

Ultimately surrenders.

Every decent pathway

Knows the importance

Of proportion;

Some grey

Is A-okay.

But the Golden Rule

(also now green)

Must be respected.

The trail

Has stages

Of commencement.

VIII

It is the length –

length –

Of the path

That makes healing whole.

Forget its jumble –

That is actually good.

Its pot-holes

And its cracks

Are part of its

Existence-deal.

IX

The path seems endless

Because it should.

It has no short version.

It – bumpingly – rolls,

Like a petite volcano's thin river.

The sky

In the afternoon

Is Canadian-deep

And clear.

Its blue does not compromise

And its clouds are shredded

And amazing and intense.

The people on the trail

Ride

Or stroll.

They, too

(River, river),

Roll.

X

The path continues

To another path.

It splits

And becomes

Two.

The greenery expands here

And passes beneath a bridge

That is like a tall gate.

The remnants of a castle,

Or some old town,

Are entered.

(Is this true? Look in the distance –

And see what remains of the great walls.)

XI

The greenery further expands

And softens.

This quality extends, it seems,

Right down to the molecular.

How can this be so?

But the green –

At this point –

Is full

In its confidence

And it takes its land

Expertly.

The mood

Becomes

Naturally religious

The mood becomes perfect,

Pure.

XII

And then at the end of today's daily,

Listen again

For the strength

Of overhead

Squeal and squawk.

There are no emergencies

That are

This high.

- Finn Harvor

VideoPoemSong 7: Bologna in Lettere

Nature and Development in South Korea

Greening Korea: Bamboo youtu.be/9cFeEvzj5PU via @YouTube. A personal documentary about bamboo forests and some of the oddest industrial zoning I’ve ever witnessed.

Greening Korea: Bamboo youtu.be/9cFeEvzj5PU via @YouTube.  Un documentaire personnel sur les forêts de bambous et certains des zonages industriels les plus étranges que j'ai jamais vus.

Greening Korea : @YouTube를 통해 Bamboo youtu.be/9cFeEvzj5PU.  대나무 숲과 내가 본 것 중 가장 이상한 산업 구역에 관한 개인 다큐멘터리.