Reflection Pond #10

Psapp - The Camel's Back (2008)

Psapp uses toys to make their music. Toys! What the fuck are we doing here?! It's not that goddamn complicated! We should all be making music. Actually there's an entire movement that espouses active living. Meaning that we take everything that we are consuming and make it instead. We create. We grow our own food. We build our own land. We make art, music, love. We appreciate the life around us by composing the beauty in our life of consuming it. It sounded pretty interesting when I first heard about this philosophy but I was concerned about certain abilities that I hadn't exactly mastered, such as making music. Now, I listen to the wonder of The Camel's Back and think, 'They fucking made that with toys?!' We must try new things and learn and become dynamic individuals. Psapp has provided this lesson for today. Appreciate them in your own way.


Cowards Bend The Knee - Guy Maddin (2003)

There are a few film-makers who don't do things conventionally...ever. Sometimes those people are called auteurs or experimental. Sometimes what they make is laughable, but every so often you come across a master and it's so damn fun. Guy Maddin is a master film-maker. This movie is so strange and fantastic that I can't even try to describe it without driving people insane, yet I love everything that I see. Cowards was filmed in Super 8 and made as a silent film, such as those from a hundred years ago. It looks and feels like something from the era of our distant ancestors but with extremely high quality editing, of course. When it comes down to creating something different or unique or, hell, even if you are just trying to make a quality film (it doesn't even have to be weird) editing is key. So many elements of film-making matter obviously but you can turn something that would otherwise be complete garbage into a fine film with a great editor. Guy Maddin and his colleagues create these types of movies and Cowards Bend The Knee is an amazing trip. I could get lost in his wandering static-starts and jump-cuts and bounces. He's a trapeze artist pulling maneuvers in the air while we all stare in wonder from way down below the skyline.