What Though The Way May Be Long

This delightfully odd little film, set to the song "What Though The Way May Be Long" by Sweden's Esbjorn Svensson Trio, shows how much can be done with very little, on a number of levels. Today it takes on an additional melancholy layer of meaning with the news that pianist Esbjorn Svensson died over the weekend.

More over at The New Low Down.

Who's Watching

Here's an update on activity in my other blogs.

The New Low Down

• KISS and Condoleeza Rice

An Oddment of Sandwiches
This purposely un-bloggy thing has turned into a story collector, of all things, thanks to a writing exercise I came up with back in November. I take the Word of the Day from two word-of-the-day services and try to sketch out a scene that makes use of both words, for example "garboil" and "lacuna". One time what came out was a poem. I try to keep this to a single page in a 7x5 notebook, so most of them come out pretty short. Initially, I tried to use both words in the story which was fine at first, but quickly began to feel forced.

It's been a profitable exercise, artistically speaking, although being in control of all these characters can be a burden. Bumping off a talking penguin is one thing, but with one poor sap I needed two edits to make sure he was dead.

So we'll see where this goes. Most of the pieces I've sketched are still in the notebook, where they will remain. No use crying over spilled ink. But there are several characters who keep turning up asking me for fresh scenes. I get the feeling that two of them are going bound to meet sometime.