Steemit Vision Quest - Week 2: “Night Flight” (Art Film)

“Night Flight” is an art film created for Steemit Vision Quest - Week 2. This short film features a poem by Mary Oliver, called “Wild Geese,” voiced with the accompaniment of a singing bowl and a whippoorwill.

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The Process

My creative process began with a search for inspiration, aligning with this week's theme: Night Flight. A bell seemed to chime when I saw a dreamcatcher. I grabbed my camera, and captured the dreamcatcher, focusing on the feather's movement in the air. My seeking led me to a singing bowl, an altar space, a poem, and an owl feather.

The poem is called “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. I hadn't read this poem aloud before, and so I wondered if my reading would bring it wings. I lit a very special braid of sweetgrass, given to me at a Sun Dance ceremony, and I believe this sweetgrass calls in the Spirit. I imagine the owl feather does the same. Journeying by the smell of burning sweetgrass, I struck the singing bowl, and felt the inner hum.

I feel grateful for Mary Oliver's words, after reading and recording them, feeling the resonation. I'm grateful for the imagery they evoke. I see violet evening skies, darkening and blueing to indigo. I hear a melancholy tone, reminding me of the shadow side of life, where deep mysteries await.

Appropriately, the song of the whippoorwill returned to my memory just this week, after hearing the Artworks shared by other Vision Questers, who are also exploring Night Flight. At the end of April last year, I recorded some whippoorwill calls here in the Austin Texas Hill Country. In American folklore, the singing of this bird is a death omen. It is said that the whippoorwill can sense a soul departing, and can capture it as it flees.

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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The Quest

The second week of Steemit Vision Quest ( #svq ) is well underway, and the entries continue to inspire. Aligning with the theme "Night Flight", we're seeing and hearing through the owls' perspective, venturing up to the moon and down into the shadow side of life, and death. Click the violet owl for more of these entries.