I got one of those Insta360 action cameras, which I am slowly learning to use. I discovered that you can post stuff in a 360 format on Vimeo. Basically, you can click and drag on the video while it is playing to change your perspective. Am I the last person to find out about this? Anyhow, I figured out you can sort of “fake it” with stuff that wasn’t necessarily shot in 360 format. That’s what this clip is. Be aware that it doesn’t work on all browsers or devices.

26 year old Hayato Sumino is a classically trained pianist from Japan. As if that’s not enough, he studied science and engineering at University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology and he also studied music information processing technology and artificial intelligence at the French Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music. Whatever that all means, I do not know, but he is an engaging and eclectic performer and a YouTube star performing under the name “Cateen”.

And, he was good enough to reach the 3rd round of the Chopin Competition last year, which is no small feat.

Thus far, my 3D experience in After Effects has consisted of making cubes in After Effects 3D environment. I figured it was time to move on to spheres. So I searched the www and quickly located a FREE plug-in from Video Copilot called ORB. Yes, that’s right, it’s free ! And, there is a nice video tutorial, so I was making “Orbs” (spheres) within minutes of downloading the plug-in, thanks to Video Copilot ! It uses its own 3D space which is controlled within the plug-in (and not After Effects 3D space), which presents some constraints ( … ah, but isn’t much of film-making about working around constraints ? … ) In the process of learning to use ORB, I made a series of variations (or perhaps, meditations) which consist of loops. I assembled all the variations to create the little film “ORB-ISH”. The imagery derives mainly from time-lapse scenes collected over the last 2 years. The variations are put together in the order that they were created (with music was added).

Donovan’s new song “I Am The Shaman” has a video directed by David Lynch. It’s beautiful & haunting and features a chorus sung backwards. I don’t know if this was Lynch’s idea or Donovan’s, but it has a strange effect and plays well in the dreamlike quality of the song. It’s good to see Donovan still doing his mystical thing at age 75. Remember “The Hurdy Gurdy Man”? That was over 50 years ago. I was 17 and had no idea what he was singing about and no idea what a “Hurdy Gurdy Man” could be. Still, the song stuck with you.

In the intervening years, I found out that a Hurdy Gurdy is a stringed musical instrument which has a rich history dating back to the 11th century. A hand crank rotates a wheel which rubs against the strings producing violin like sounds. It is similar to a bagpipe in that it has drone strings which produce a constant sound under the melodies played. It is hard to imagine one “singing songs of love” against the melancholy sounds it produces, but if anyone could do it, Donovan could.

I first met Phil Arnot in 1991, responding to an ad in a local newspaper for a 9 day backpacking adventure in a “remote” region of the High Sierra called “The Black Divide”, led by Phil. At the time, I was nearly 41, and in reasonably good shape. Phil was 67, so I figured I would have no problem keeping up with the group. It’s not like we were mounting an expedition to Mount Everest. The first day, as we entered the High Sierra by hiking 8 miles over Bishop Pass (12,000′) burdened by backpacks heavy with supplies for the next 9 days, it dawned on me that this was going to be an awesome experience. And, despite the the fact that everyone in the group was in as good or better shape than me, none of us were as fit as Phil. Phil, as it turns out, had been hiking all over the High Sierra since the 1940s, and guiding trips since the 1960s. He had an intimate and spiritual relationship with this sublime wilderness and loved to share it’s secrets and stories with others. He used to say that he did not go into the wilderness for recreation, he went there for RE-creation, to be renewed, to be RE-created in the pantheistic beauty of the natural world.

Besides being a wilderness guide, he was a skilled photographer, author and teacher. He grew up in San Francisco and was a star athlete excelling in track while in High School and later at University of California, Berkeley. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II as a pilot on a B-17, flying 21 missions over Germany for which he was awarded several service medals. After the war, he became a committed pacifist, frequently attending peace marches and writing letters to politicians, hoping to make the world a better place. He most certainly did. For many who knew him, myself included, he was an inspiration. GRATITUDE. PEACE. LOVE. My friend.