This scene is from an upcoming movie called Big Easy Express. The documentary follows several bands traveling by train from San Francisco to New Orleans. In this clip, Mumford and Sons are playing with the Austin High School marching band.
This is some joyous music. And someone said of Big Easy Express: this tour is bound for glory. What a great motto.
The photo is “Nimbus” by Berndnaut Smilde. He sets up the perfect conditions to create clouds indoors. Love, love the idea of having a puffy cloud overhead. “I’m interested in the ephemeral aspect of the work,” he said. Check out more about his work here.
I realized I never reported back on my October challenge. I wrote almost every day, and that resulted in finishing a short story and my novella.
I also spoke with the editor about the original short story I submitted to her. I confessed that it had been so long since I’d worked on it that it was feeling lifeless to me. So she’s considering the new short story in its place.
Here are the openers for both of the projects.
Casa Soledad (novella)
“This house was in the middle of a reno before it was put on the market,” Lauren said, double-checking the street address on her navigation system. The two of them were driving around a huge lot—almost two acres, according to the sales flyer. A tall stucco fence, crumbling and exposing stone in some places, blocked the view of the house, which was almost dead center on the property according to the map on the flyer. This was a house Marcy had insisted on seeing. It hadn’t been on the list her mother had put together for her.
the end; the beginning (short story)
“My face felt raw, scratched. I struggled to open my eyes. I propped myself up on my forearms. Waves broke against the shore, sucked back, withdrew into the ocean’s depth, and returned full force. I sat up. I was wearing a skirt I hadn’t seen (or fit into) since college. My shirt—soft, faded, and transparently thin in some places—was an old favorite too. Where had they come from? Stranger still, where was I? I didn’t live near a beach. At least, I didn’t think so.”
"You have no idea what you're doing. This is great. ... If you don't know what's impossible, it's easier to do."
"If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that. That's much harder than it sounds, and sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine."
"I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work."
"Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn't wind up getting the money either."
"If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something."
"When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art."
"The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself, that is the moment you may be starting to get it right."
"The old rules are crumbling, and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules."
"So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would."
"Make interesting mistakes. Break rules. Make the world more interesting for your being here."