Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Vid #3: Kirk: "To His Mistress..."

Eighteen (18).
Or was it nineteen?
That's the answer to how many women Captain Kirk kissed on Star Trek, out of 79 episodes (if you count the times his body kissed someone but he wasn't in it). But I may have missed some, because I was only looking at episodes I remembered kisses in, and later I realized I'd missed a couple, so had to add them and reconfigure all the timing on iMovie. AAaaaargh.

YouTube hasn't uploaded the still for my latest (third) fanvid yet. Right now (5:18 p.m., CST), it displays a silhouette of a camera-- but the vid itself IS up, and it's both silly and sultry (siltry? sully?):

(Star Trek) Kirk: "To His Mistress...".



It's an expansion (major!) of the "Metaphysical Quickie" gugeo post I did the other night, which took me less than an hour. The vid took, well, I wish I'd kept count. Many hours. Many lots of hours.
Spent futzing with the timing, mostly, in this movie, to get everything aligned right--the addition of sound is something I never had to worry about before, in my old words-and-pix days.

It's such a fascinating and satisfying, albeit nerve-racking, process, learning how to make these vids. Sister said it's like learning a new language: you start out knowing nothing and after a couple weeks, you can say,
"Je voudrais un cheval du fromage."
(That means, "I would like a cheese horse." I think.)

I very much feel as if I'm in another country, these past couple weeks since I started making these iMovies. I wake up in the middle of the night with that sense of displacement you get in a hotel room on another continent, that slight delay before you know where and who you are.

Metaphysical jet lag, you could call it.

I'm going to go look up some of my old favorites (on youTube), the ones that remind me who I am. Like Moonstruck.
(Just did it and posted my favorite part--the one the entire Basilica seems able to quote from heart.)

_______________________

Here are the description notes I wrote for youTube:

Kirk's omnivorous appetite relishes sweet and savory and everything in between--and plenty of it; but what I love best about the captain is his smirk.

Donne (pronounced "done") would have approved Kirk's naughty use of his poem---his objection here is to the way Kirk is slaughtering his meter.

*The music is "The Stripper," by Daniel Rose, who wrote it for a TV show in 1958. No wonder it fits Star Trek so well.

*Paramount owns Star Trek. My intentions are entirely frivolous, er, educational.
(May blessings rain on Trekcore.com for screencaps. And my friends who listen to me rant.)

*Portrait of John Donne as a young lover (c.1595), by an unknown painter; National Portrait Gallery, London. (But I didn't use their copyrighted image.)

John Donne (c. 1572-1631), metaphysical poet—(like Andrew Marvell, of "The Definition of Love")--and Anglican priest is known for his early love poems and his later spiritual ones: for instance, "no man is an island."

Here's the complete poem, by, of course, the young Donne:

ELEGY XIX. TO HIS MISTRESS GOING TO BED

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.

Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.

Your gown, going off, such beauteous state reveals,
as when from flowry meads th' hill's shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.

In such white robes, heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou, Angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite:
Those set our hairs on end, but these our flesh upright.

License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee.

To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in men's views,

That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)

Must see revealed. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence. To teach thee, I am naked first; why than,
what needst thou have more covering than a man?