Harlinn - The Film! The Music!

This post is dedicated to "Team Harlinn".

Harlinn is a psychological sci-fi film, conceived, directed and produced by Greg Bakker and his team of friends, who variously acted in and helped with the production of this, Greg's debut film.

A scene from Harlinn

20 years old and still a student at the University of Cape Town, Greg has all the characteristics of a future top-class film-maker. He is meticulous and pays attention to even the tiniest detail. His work already shows a refined sense of artistic judgement. And throughout the project he has shown a maturity beyond his years in his ability to work in a disciplined but generous manner with a disparate group of people of different ages and levels of experience. 

But of all the Team Harlinn members, I most particularly cheer for my husband, Guy.

Guy composed the original musical soundtrack for the film (sound-scaping, he terms it), and his music for the film has received much praise from a variety of quarters, including from a music theoretician.

Guy has a natural and emotional sense of musical composition. After ascertaining what Greg wanted the music to convey in the film, Guy familiarised himself with the actors, the characters, and the script. Then he put all that to one side and composed the music entirely from the silent film footage. The music theoretician noted afterwards that Guy had instinctively composed the music in the sound range that lies below spoken sound (despite composing it to silent footage). This was not only useful in terms of the film's atmosphere, but also ensured that the music did not clutter up the actors' speech.

So where did I fit in? I had only a very small part in this, but it was fairly crucial.

I was about to throw our (outdated) community newspaper away, but saw that I had not read it. So I quickly skimmed through it (being of frugal mind and not wanting to waste it, even though the paper is free). There I saw a short article by Greg in which he had made a request for an interested person to please come forward to compose music for his film.

Knowing that Guy has alway been interested in film music composition, I showed him the article and encouraged him to contact Greg, even though the article was some days old.

Harlinn was Guy's first original filmscore. (He has put music to film before, but it was music that he had pre-composed for other purposes). He has had a lot of pleasure out of the project and has taught himself a lot too in the process and so has gained more confidence in his abilities (funny how very talented people often doubt their abilities). Guy is now looking forward to composing for other film projects.

Our Harlinn experience illustrates something about taking chances.

We all want chances to be given to us. We often bemoan - "if only I had the chance...".

Yet when we come across a chance, we often reject it for one reason or another. Chances are often poorly recognisable at first glance and almost slip past. We might think that the chance offered doesn't fit what we want. Or it doesn't seem worth the trouble of taking up. Or it might seem to be too much trouble. Or we feel that we are unable to take it up. Or it might seem too late. But a chance is not a chance unless it is acted upon.

The good things that come about from taking up the challenge of an offered chance usually exceed expectations vastly and pleasurably. (I am almost sure that there is a moral here that applies to me and blogging....)

Team Harlinn have shown amply that taking a chance has been highly rewarding in so many ways. And they have demonstrated that a first film project can be fully professional. I look forward to attending the premiere.

Fairy Rings!

Here's a bit of interconnectivity for you.

There I was, checking my blog's URL on Google to make sure that I added it correctly to my Smashwords Author Page profile. While I was at it, I glanced in curiousity over the other websites proffered for the search term "nine times circling" to see what else the search words had retrieved. And I noted an amusing but pertinent Wikipedia reference - to fairy rings!

I quote:

"Some legends assert that the only safe way to investigate a fairy ring is to run around it nine times. This affords the ability to hear the fairies dancing and frolicking underground."

What fun! A different take on circling nine times and an underground realm. Different, but also appropriate -

My name, Fiona, means "fair, fey or fairy" - and mycology (the study of mushrooms and other fungi) became a passion of mine as an undergraduate at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg.

(I still like fungi - here is a little group, nestled in an old tree trunk,

that we noticed on one of our walks round our suburb)

A magical moment for me during the early days of our mycology course occurred during our first class field trip to collect fungal specimens from a local forest. I discovered a fairy ring of Coral Fungi everyone else had just wandered past. As one might expect from the name, Coral fungi have beautiful white delicately branched fruiting bodies that look like coral - and some are known as Fairy Clubs.

Sadly, our mycology lectures were not all-inclusive. Had I only known to circle the fairy ring nine times, I too might have heard the fairies dancing and frolicking underground!

The fungi I found were most likely Lentaria micheneri, which grow on leaf litter. Surreal when seen.

Kuo, M. (2009, May). Lentaria micheneri. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com

Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/lentaria_micheneri.html

Well, there you have it - rings and circles of interconnectivity.

Okay - So From Where Did I Get the Blog Title?

"Nine Times Circling" is a phrase from my favourite poem, Col's Phantasm Speaks.

It is my favourite poem because it was composed together by me and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I should explain that STC or Col, as he liked to call himself, had no notion that we were in this together, because he composed his portion of the poem way back in 1797, publishing it in 1816 as Kubla Khan. He did at least have the grace to call Kubla Khan "a fragment".

In 2011, I  composed the rest of the poem - and very much the longer part of it.

In all, I think that Col and I did a great job together, especially considering that Col was plagued by illness and laudanum dependence while he composed his lines and I was recovering from brain surgery as I composed mine!

And so to the Blog title:

The phrase "Nine Times Circling" can be found in my portion in Col's Phantasm Speaks:

"Nine times circling the moving waters swirled
Below Earth's face in fluid bliss
And sank in silence into the abyss."

and:

"But nine times circling, sacred Alph ever
Washed over and over the glowing soul river."

Here's the link:
Col's Phantasm Speaks

In the poem, I envisaged Alph, the sacred river, as an embodiment of the forces and flow of creativity and their movement through the deep inner world of the sub-conscious. There, ideas flow in "lordly concourse" with one another and sink into the "abyss" of the unconscious, later to arise "as a great tide turns by full moon drawn" - refreshed and enabled to fountain "once more into the radiant day", and renewing the creative impetus in the upper world of conscious thought. There is more to the analogy, but it is better to read and ponder it in the poem itself.

The phrase itself is derived from the idea of the Styx, a mythological Greek river said to encircle the earth nine times to form the boundary between the upper Earth and the Greek Underworld. The Styx was so sacred that the gods themselves were inviolably bound by oaths sworn on it.

That is the kind of respect I feel that the creative mind is due.

On a lighter note - the act of creativity is not a linear thing. The creative thought weaves and meanders ("five miles meandering" - that was Col's phrase) and sinks "in tumult" into apparent oblivion, forces itself back into consciousness, meanders a bit more and sinks again, where it finds and becomes "conjoined" with other rivers of unconscious thought and impression.

Well, at least that is how my mind works!

So now you know.

On Hesitation

Before I begin anything new, I take a breath and pause.

Taking breath is simple enough - it invigorates and readies me for whatever the new challenge brings.

The pause though is more complex.

At different times (or even on the same occasion), I variously pause to gather my mental and emotional energies, to make or mark that final resolve to cast away doubts about how to proceed, and to once more review and marshall my readiness for the task. Then the pause extends as I savour and anticipate the forthcoming moment of beginning - of moving forward - while at the same time I worry and linger over what I might give up by moving forward into a new enterprise. And it must be admitted that I also pause to examine myself and to observe myself in the act of doing something new. Like many others - I think most of us - I am a self-conscious creature. A propensity for being self conscious - of minutely observing ourselves and our effect on others - is a part of the human repertoire. Not for nothing does our species revel in mirrors, cameras and blogs!

The downside of being self-conscious and of wondering what I would be giving up by blogging is that my taking breath has been more like holding my breath, and my pause before action has now extended for over two years!

So what has kept me from just piling in and getting started?

Well - in my defense, I must say that a lot else of great import has also been going on in my life. And yes, I realise that I could have been blogging about it as it was happening, more or less. The notion of time, events and impressions flying by all unrecorded has induced a diffuse guilt in me - but not  sufficiently enough to induce me to begin my blog: I know that I can blog about events and ideas retrospectively - to retroblog, if you will. (After all, as it is I would have to retroblog about anything that happened or that I thought about before web journaling was invented).

Then too, I have yielded to my belief that first impressions count. I tend to agonise about first impressions - which never turn out as I might have envisaged or desired. Perhaps that is just how life is, or perhaps there is a deeper part of me that successfully wars with careful scripting of life! I  wanted my blog presented "just so" to create that excellent first impression.

Well, that has not yet happened, because I keep on changing my mind on what I want to present and how (I call it "refining my ideas"). So much so that I begin to suspect that if I wait until my presentation is "just so", the blog will never happen! So here is my blog, its appearance all unfinished. This, I comfort myself, appropriately reflects the essential human condition. I will improve things as I go along. To those of you reading this post a couple of years from now - pause a moment to wonder what this blog might originally have looked like.....

And finally - dare I admit that this is my real reason? - I am paradoxically concerned about what I might give up by beginning to blog. My main concern is in giving up and thereby losing any of my privacy.

This of course is at war with my desire to share and communicate (there must be something at play here about being born on the cusp between wildly exhibitionist Leo and deeply retiring Cancer. Awkward to say the least). So I have extended my pause for over two years as I have silently reflected and internally debated with myself about how to both maintain privacy and reveal myself on the Web!

The picture above says it all - that's me - part smiling, part hidden by hair and glasses, peeking out into the sunlight, hands clasped thoughtfully (nervously?)....

Well - I still don't have an answer about how to be at once private and public. Rats! I shall simply have to do as the White King commanded Haigha - "Begin at the beginning, continue until you reach the end, and then stop." Sage advice!

I have now begun. Whew! It should be easier from here on in.