The Magic of Music
Okay, so this is awesome. Just watch!
I think my favorite stuff on the internet is this sort of thing. This kind of creative effort that really reaches into multiple media to create something that nobody’s ever seen before. I’m not saying this is the only guy in history who’s ever done anything like this, but I’ve sure never seen anything like it before. What’s awesome about it, though, is that we’ve all seen the individual elements of it many, many times. Everyone has heard songs, and everyone has seen card tricks. But when the two are combined in such a clever way, it amplifies everything that’s impressive about them individually. It helps that the song’s lyrics are already clever and allude to playing cards, and it helps, of course, that this guy is already amazing with his sleight of hand skills and his inventiveness in crafting his tricks. But when the two are joined into a single act, it has this exponential effect, and the vision to harness that is what makes this guy really brilliant.
I’ve always thought that was the essence of creativity, really. Not to create something out of nothing, which I think is impossible anyway, but to take different familiar elements and join them in a way that is unfamiliar and yet somehow seems completely logical and even inevitable. I think when people try to just be “original,” they sacrifice their audience’s ability to connect with the art. The audience needs to see something familiar in order to understand the art, and so they can have a frame of reference with which to recognize and truly appreciate what’s “new” about it. They need to contrast the new with the old.
It also makes the art more impressive if the audience can see the challenge the artist overcame. If I invent something completely new, like, say, a Goolakfa Brump, nobody will be impressed that I’ve created such a thing because I had no boundaries against which to struggle. It took no effort to create it because I didn’t have any rules by which I had to abide in order to create it. I made up my own rules. But if I start with two already established things, like two different film genres, and combine them, I have to follow the conventions of each and make them line up in a way that fits and even makes it seem like they were supposed to be together all along. If I can achieve that, people will be really impressed because they will recognize the challenge of what I did. In that sense, art is more like a game than people realize, I think.
Okay, that’s Matt’s philosophy lesson for the day. Happy Thursday, everyone!
Bye.
Archer: The Second Helping!
Sorry for not having posted anything in almost a week, but I’m still losing my mind from my new sleep schedule. Also, I will soon be working frantically on fixing up a new house, so I may not be able to post as much of my own stuff in the coming weeks, but try I must! It’s a good thing, though, because with the new house, I’ll finally be able to really get some recording done, and you should see a good deal more output from me pretty soon.
For today, I thought I’d share a really fun video I got to take part in. My friend Dan submitted this video to a film editing competition in which contestants were asked to use footage from three separate Nicholas cage movies to creatively edit together a single movie trailer for a silly, nonexistent, new Nicholas Cage movie. The source footage was taken from the films Raising Arizona, Face-Off, and Ghost Rider. Dan decided to go for a 1960s-style James-Bond-type trailer for a fake sequel called Archer: The Second Helping (if you haven’t seen Face-Off, the protagonist’s name is Sean Archer), and he asked me to provide the voice over, so I tried to do a cheesy, old-school movie trailer voice. You know, Mid-Atlantic accent and everything, although I didn’t have time to properly learn the accent, so I sort of faked it. Anyway, I think Dan did a really good job with this. I know he put a lot of work into it, and apparently, it paid off because he won second place. Hellz yeah. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!
A Couple of Really Great Videos
No video of me today. I’m starting a night job tonight, and I’ve spent the last few days trying vainly to adjust my sleep schedule, an effort which has left me in a grotesque state of enduring zombification. There’s no way I could possibly smile for the camera or sing today without looking and sounding like a chain smoker on morphine. I could have covered “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang, and you would have shot yourself in the bathroom immediately after watching the video. So instead, here are a couple of really neat YouTube videos by other people that you probably have not seen but really should…
I want to know how long it took them to do this. I wish they’d done the whole song, but it’s absolutely delightful either way.
I don’t think I even need to say anything, other than why in the hell do these people look so goddamned bored? This is so unbelievably cool!
Right. So, I would like to submit these two videos as further evidence in support of my argument that the two best things that ever happened to the universe are human beings and the internet. Unless you wanna add The Lord. I’ll accept that. But he was technically human, so I’m still right. Oh, I also really like spiders and whales, so those can be honorable mentions, I guess. And puppy-dogs. And candy. And birthdays. And sex. And birthday sex. And Fred Rogers. But he was technically human. Okay, I should probably stop there.
Wait, why did I put “birthday sex” and “Fred Rogers” right next to each other? Christ, I need sleep.
Once Is Never Enough
Back in college, I was fortunate enough to take part in an embarrassingly amateur 007 film spoof, quite perfectly entitled “Once Is Never Enough.” It was oodles of fun, and I was commissioned (at a rate of zero dollars and zero cents per hour) to write the title song, which was even oodlier in terms of funness. It’s rather silly, so there’s that. Anyway, I thought it would be kind of fun to throw it up on YouTube for all to hear (by “throw up,” I mean “stream,” not “vomit.” And by “stream,” I mean “broadcast digitally via the world wide web,” not “urinate.”) I’ve never thought of myself as someone who is very good at deliberately mimicking musical genres, but I must say I’m pretty proud of just how well this turned out as far as sounding like a James Bond movie title song (at least musically. I know the lyrics are over the top). Well, go ahead and enjoy, why don’t you?
Another Cover
Hey, Remember Emma Louise? I raved about how I thought she was gonna be super famous soon. Remember? Okay, well, I thought tonight I’d throw up a video of myself playing one of my favorite songs of hers. It’s called “Temporary Friend.” Enjoy it, mother-effers. Glaz out, yo.
Musical Microbes
What up. I know I vanished for a few days, but I’ve been rather busy helping my friend Jerry get married and helping some fictional zombies eat me alive (I had a small role in a short zombie film which shot this weekend). There. That should explain it.
Okay, well, I hope to be a good deal more productive the next couple of weeks while I have the whole house to myself to record. Hip. Hip. Hooray.
For now, why don’t you write some music, too? Take a look at this ridiculous and fun site called Seaquence which allows you to create little biddy musical organisms that play whatever goofy chiptune sounds you want them to and swim around adorably while you giggle. Below you can check out the one I made, but you can create your own, too! It’s jolly, proper fun, if I don’t say so myself. Enjoy!
