it looks so easy
have to remind self that they
make it look easy
I betcha that readers think I am going to tell some sort of sports based story along the lines of one Sunday afternoon in a park in Ann Arbor back when I was in college, I was playing in a pick up football game with my buddies and with the sun setting behind us as we ran a play, I looked back to the quarterback only to lose everything in the sun EXCEPT for the football, which he threw to me in a straight line with the Sun so that all I saw was a bright orange backdrop with black dot of the ball perfectly eclipsing the Sun coming right at me and I held out my arms and the ball literally slid into my hands as I was running at top speed and I turned and ran all in the same motion and scored a touchdown.
It was the best pass-catch play of my life.
It was so good, that everyone on the field had to stop and watch and then applaud.
I was pretty proud of it myself.
I made it look easy.
Walking home we cut across the athletic campus and out on one of the practice fields was a couple of Michigan football players.
We were tossing our ball around and it got away and rolled out on the field and I raised my arm and called out, l’il help??
One those players nodded, picked up our ball and with a flick of his wrist, tossed it back to me.
I mean, that’s what it looked like but somehow it was like he fired a bullet at me.
The ball came at in a blur and I held out my hands, not to catch it, but to fend it off.
It smacked my hand and it felt like it took my arm off at the shoulder.
Ouch, Ouch, OUCH! I thought but at loud I yelled “THANKS” as best I could.
Any thought of my great play faded in the light of this one little toss.
This one little toss at the major college sports level.
They make it look so easy.
But I am not going to tell you that story.
What reminded me of how folks can make things look so easy was an odd video clip I found online.
I was searching for a piece of music by Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach and very much by accident clicked on this other link.
Before I go any further we have to enter the world of suspended disbelief.
Now safely within those confines, this video is kind of the old MTV music videos that tells a story around the playing of a piece of rock and roll music.
In this case though, the piece of music is the the aria Kommt, ihr angefocht’nen Sünder from Mr. Bach’s Cantata No.30 “Freue dich, erlöste Schar.
The story told by the video, there is no dialogue, is that Mr. Back planned for the aria to be song by his 11 year old son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
Wilhelm discovers that the Bach family maid has an incredible voice and he knows that women are not allowed to sing in Church at time.
Young Willie fakes a sore throat and talks the maid into singing behind him in the choir while he lip syncs knowing full well that his Dad (Mr. Bach) will see through the charade and find out who is singing.
Got it?
Remember we are in the world of suspended disbelief.
And I watched this unfold with a mixture of disbelief and unadulterated pleasure.
First off the movie making itself of this little bit of movie, the camera work, the lighting, the pacing is all really really good.
I mean really really good.
Then the piece of music selected, the aria, which I have never heard of, the music itself, is so effortlessly effortless as are the musicians.
Then there is the voice of the soloist.
Turns out she is a mezzo-soprano named Magdalena Kožená.
Never heard of her.
Wish I had.
Remember we are in the world of suspended disbelief.
The video of her of her singing in character as the maid, again so effortlessly effortless is charming.
In the magic of the world we are in, she just lets the music out as if she wasn’t singing, but as if these sounds were captured inside her.
All in all, this little clip gives a 5 minute escape from the real world to the world of suspended disbelief.
There are days when I would call this gift priceless.
Taken together, the whole package, the music, the performance, the video, all in 5 minutes, all looks so easy, as if any one could have produced it.
They made it all look so easy.
And here is my mystery?
Where did it come from?
Is a clip from another, longer movie?
Is this the entire piece?
I began searching the World Wide Web.
The clip itself is on YouTube in at least three versions.
It is in the Youtube comments that I have been able to get any information.
One comment from 2016 said, “Skvělý režijní nápad Ondřeje Havelky propojil Bachovu kantátu s uvěřitelným příběhem o tom, jak ženy pronikly na kostelní kůry. Výborný představitel J.S. Bacha, životní role 🙂 A samozřejmě úžasná Magdalena – a to má ten klip už skoro dvacet let …”
Thank goodness the GOOGLE TRANSLATE now comes with Language Detection and the Google detected Czech and translated this as:
Ondřej Havelka’s brilliant directorial idea connected Bach’s cantata with a believable story about how women infiltrated church choirs. The excellent representative of J.S. Wow, the role of a lifetime 🙂 And of course the wonderful Magdalena – and that clip has been around for almost twenty years…
So this clip was made maybe back in 1996?
It was in another comment that I came across this information.
If anyone wants to own this video on a DVD, or if you wonder if this is a part of a larger video or movie, it seems that this is simply a short ‘music video’ that is available (officially) only as an ‘Easter egg’ on the 2-CD set titled, “Magdelena Kozena – Enchantment”, Deutsche Grammophon #00289 477 6153. It is a hidden MPEG video file on the first of the two CDs, and in order to access it, you must use your computer (not a regular CD or DVD player).
No kidding.
So …
All that work.
All that effortlessly effortless effort to create, produce and record this little video was all … just for … fun.
It all looks so easy.
What was going through folks head when at a production meeting, someone raised their hand and said, You know what would be neat? If we …
I am not so stupid as to think that this video was not created with a purpose in mind but in the end …
Still …
If you bought this CD, then put the CD in your computer to play and instead of playing the cd, but looked at the files in Windows File Manager and you saw this video file and you clicked on it, all by chance, you got to see this video.
There is something widely satisfying about that.
Charming.
I think Mr. Bach would have loved this.
I have to ask.
What else is out there.
(If the player below doesn’t work – click here.)
No Haiku For You 