In creating my finished video for Welkin I made a few significant changes- none of which change the overall concept of the piece but hopefully do bring out the meaning more clearly. In the updated version there is now a littering of street noise behind the sound of the bells from the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Ditmars Boulevard and 29th street. At first I tried to use filters to mute these sounds- cars and trucks rolling by, children talking to their parents, someone mustering up a big, phlegmy wad to thrust forth onto the sidewalk. In recutting I realized that these sounds are just as ambient to me as the bells. Unlike the cacophony of airheads screaming on their cellphones or fresh-faced graduates gushing about the newest Sushi joint or coffee shop to pop up (thereby closing another local business such as the tattoo parlor that recently went under) these other sounds are a sampling of what I still love about my neighborhood. A diverse group are responsible for these sounds- Greeks, Italians, Indians and Pakistanis to name a few. But more and more this aural landscape is morphing into a screeching record of American white girls who twitter like they’re twelve when in reality puberty is a thing of their past. Sauntering around in their purple leggings, it’s a challenge not to shove them in front of the Q19 bus.
I still can’t figure out why these things were easier to take when I first moved to Queens in 2003. I’m sure these people were all part of my environment then as well, but for some reason I was able to ignore them in ways that I just can’t anymore.
The use of super-8 for the first segment is symbolic of a time when things were simpler, especially my attitude. I’d sit on the balcony of my apartment and stare up at the sky just as it is being presented to the viewer here- eyes to the sky, embracing the hazy lull as planes and blimps float by overhead, impervious to the frivolties of the world beneath them.
In the second segment of “Welkin” the medium changes to video- something I have also had a difficult relationship with. I appreciate video and it’s versatility; however, it has also allowed any fool that can press “record” to boast himself as a “filmmaker” (which, for the record, is an inaccurate moniker if you’ve only ever used video). Coincidentally, the growing yupster population seems to be ripe with these budding young “auters.”
It only made sense, then, to use video as the illustrating medium for the segment of the piece in which everything abruptly changes. In an instant the soft focus of the film cuts to sharp digital images of an electrical storm. The lightning is a seizure-inducing spasm of activity, an electric fence between Earth and the Vault of Heaven. The bells are no longer the eloquent song of the Immaculate Conception Church, but the sonorous din of a Belgian cathedral- invasive and deafening just like this unstoppable breed of new New Yorkers.
