I have been trying to create a video essay that would sum up my work on The Red Telephone Box That Talks a Bit Like Me. For some reason I need to do this. I think it’s about completion/closure/to have some tangible artifact to show off. My original intention was to accompany it with an academic journal article. I have also started that several times but I knew I had lost the plot when my last attempt began with me recalling the death of the family dog and my career in HMV records and how I was inspired by a scratched copy of a Karlheinz Stockhausen disc to embrace serendipity as part of my creative process – dear oh dear… pretentious or what! It’s been a right struggle and on and off has taken a year. I haven’t counted the number of failed attempts I have made but my poor family and friends have had to endure showings of all of them. The last one was 30 minutes long and very dull. This one is 13 minutes long and much better. It is to be my last attempt. It’s finally done (emboldened to remind self). I will do something else for a while and then try to write the article before the anniversary of my retirement from Hull in October. Then I feel it’s time to enjoy my phone box as was originally intended as a tiny private theatre instead of a obsessive, creative and academic mission.
The footage was all shot on an oldish mobile phone which I must say I am rather proud of as I was always trying to persuade my students (unsuccessfully) not bother with the fancy gear they could borrow from the uni which would inevitably go wrong or be so complicated they couldn’t figure it. Let me know what if anything emerges from the video that’s actually clear or better still, interesting. Although I have not the slightest intention of changing a thing even if nobody gets it. More than anything I need to stop trying to make this video now and forever.
