My apologies if you have already come across this very short video by a seventeen year old American high school student called Joe Bush. I realise that it has being doing the internet rounds for a good while but I only came across it today. Apparently Joe is no relation to George Bush Sr or that fellow's intellectually challenged offspring. What was his name? You need your sound on to hear the musical accompaniment - "Mind Heist" by Zack Hemsey - from the film "Interception" - and don't blink or you'll miss it.
While watching this amazing two minute video, I was very conscious of the amount of mental processing my mind had to undertake in that time. In a moment you see an image and your brain recognises it - connects it with what you already know and have previously seen - gives if fleeting meaning before another image rapidly replaces it. In that one short video collage there are literally hundreds of different images and the human brain deals with every one.
Is Joe Bush right? Is Planet Earth's story just a momentary blossoming of life in the endlessness of the universe before the inky blankness returns with millions of lifeless miles between millions of lifeless planets and faraway stars - like distant pinpricks of light - boiling angrily in the void? Notably, religion and ideas about some sort of afterlife seem to be quite insignificant in Joe Bush's "History".
Oh I nearly forgot - to all of my esteemed American visitors - may I say - Happy Independence Day!
Oh I nearly forgot - to all of my esteemed American visitors - may I say - Happy Independence Day!
Yes he is, we think in human time because we are selfish.
ReplyDeleteLook at rocks at over four billion years old and it makes one realise how insignificant we are.
You are probably more significant than I am Adrian. I am not even a pawn in God's cruel game - not even a measly Scottish midge.
DeleteWe (and our whole planet) may be totally meaningless in the Big Picture, but that does not really change anything about how real this life feels - and how good it can be (and quite the struggle at other times).
ReplyDelete"...how real this life feels" - yes you're right Meike. Maybe the rest of it doesn't matter - it's how we feel things are.
DeleteI loved the music too
ReplyDeleteIts urgency fitted so well and I loved the pause for Mona Lisa.
DeleteIndependence from what? We still pay taxes, only on everything, not just tea. We're still at the whims of an aristocracy. Was King George really so bad?
ReplyDeleteIndependence from the evil English monsters of sin and debauchery - amongst whom I count myself.
DeleteNothing to do with this post... but, what a cute little lad you 'once' were. It stirred me into reading your complete profile, not a habit I get into very often, I admit. Leading me neatly onto your preferred reading... 'Yellow Pages' does that mean you will be painting your push-bike yellow?
ReplyDeleteLLX
No it means I am a Sinophile.
DeleteNext you will be telling me you are an avid fan of Pearl S Buck.
DeleteLLX
Brilliant video. I don't know any 17 year olds who have the intelligence to put something like that together.
ReplyDelete...and you look SO cute in your new photo with your wee chubby cheeks.
How could someone so sweet turn into the monster I have become?
DeleteClever ~ loved the subliminal message ~ Drink More Coke.
ReplyDeleteI must say, I didn't spot that subliminal message or are you just jossing with me Carol?
DeleteBrilliant juxtaposition of images and music (I'm afraid I didn't hear any singing though, even when I closed my eyes and listened without the visuals - did I misunderstand that bit?). As Molly said, quite a feat for one so young.
ReplyDeleteWhat particularly struck me was the effect of being moved from a planet that was slowly evolving in stately beauty to one that has become frenetic with an ugliness of humanity, developments so quick that there is no time to assimilate and appreciate one before it is outmoded and a sense that as it continues to gather momentum it can do no other than implode or burn itself out.
One of my sons, when he was much younger, frequently came to me with a serious of cuts, grazes and bumps. When I asked, "What happened?" his answers always started with the same words, "Well, I was running too fast..." and never once learned that taking things slower might result in less accidents. It's a lesson that our world also seems strangely impervious to and yet constantly expresses surprise when the scratches and breakages happen.
Elizabeth - that mad rush you allude to is best illustrated by looking at world population growth. For many centuries the growth was gradual - sometimes static but in the last 150 years it has burgeoned like an uncontrollable forest fire - consuming everything in its path.
DeleteIt's a very thought-provoking and depressing piece of work. I've seen it before and every time I see something new in it but I always feel the same at the end.
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