James is a top filmmaker-music composer locally. His latest: “A Shortened Infinity” (look up that title on YouTube to view) is a beautiful, wondrous piece de resistance on many topics. I’ve included some of my e-mail response to the video below; you can intuit the depth, richness, and intensity of this work from my comments:
Title is an oxymoron: there is the simultaneous combo and overlap of time and eternity flowing thruout.
One of those ironies Blake and Wordsworth tripped over, antecedently.
Blake notably in “To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”
As Aldous Huxley remarked It’s both things simultaneously, not just one (as the reductionists/convenient explanationists would have it,
or Eliot on the follies of rolling the universe up into a ball (“Prufrock”), or as Davies’ “He could never get it all”, commenting on Satie’s work in “Six Gymnopedies”.
“A reminder in churning” and the water/sea imagery: the ever-changing sea/representation of time by Tennyson.
You’ve caught quite a bit in this short work of art, James.
A poem/homage to Nature, childhood (a la Wordsworth’s “Ode”), coming of age/perspective, the constancy of change given time’s essence, how “perspective” comes up short inevitably, death in life and vice versa, the effects and power of memory, etc. And there’s more here than I limitedly just said above.
The influence of Malick is clear; you have appreciated and learned much from visionary filmmakers like him.
Your music memorable as usual.
An outstanding ‘capture’ of big chunks of life with perspectives interwoven to create one original whole.
As in Matthew Arnold, you’ve reached a stage where you are seeing things “steadily” and “whole”.
Postscript/But, most of all, as seen in the dedication, this is a fine homage to the life, work, and inspiration of Michael Father Catfish Mireau of Edmonton. (Mike was James’ cousin and James used the playground, where they used to play together, as a key set in the film.)