Unicorn Migration — in motion!

Dave Williams42 Comments

‘Tis the season for birds in the U.S. to fly south for warmer places, so it feels fitting to post the video that I created for my poem, “Unicorn Migration.”

I published the poem here two years ago, in November 2023. I’m also including the poem in this post, below. I’m still really happy about the poem and its message.

This past summer, I made the the video, with a little animation. You can see it below or on YouTube. I hope you enjoy!

The drive from their house
to the parking lot seemed
to take a long time to Joe,
as did the walk
from the parking lot
to the observation spot—
a (dry) grassy slope
overlooking a valley.

Mid-way through the walk,
little Calvin asked to be carried,
and Joe was happy to do so.

Finally the day had arrived,
finally Joe and his family were here,
amid the crowd of other watchers,
and Joe’s excitement
included himself and Calvin.

Joe had wanted
to come here as a boy,
but his parents never took him,
and he never asked to go.

Because his father
was one of those people
with entrenched beliefs:
boys love dragons,
girls love unicorns.
If a boy loved unicorns,
he was deemed a sissy
and ridiculed.

Joe had wondered:
Why did it have to be that way?
Couldn’t kids of any gender
love whatever creatures are out there?

Grown into an adult,
Joe didn’t go by himself,
guilt-shame keeping him away.

Not until his son Calvin
grew into toddlerdom
did Joe confess his wish,
and his wife Beverly
looked at him with tenderness,
saying, “It’s about time you go, then.”

Sound arrived before the sight:
thudding, like a thousand
marching drummers.

“There they are!”
said someone in the crowd.

Joe kept silent among
the murmurings of the watchers
as the herd showed.
Brown, black, chestnut, white, dappled:
the mass of unicorns
in their annual migration south,
amid cooling weather,
traveling to greener pastures.
Manes waved, horns glinted in the sun.
Some unicorns trotted, others galloped,
presumably for the joy of running.
Like Calvin did in parks.

Joe gazed at his son’s
thrilled face that stared at the creatures.
Calvin, like a unicorn:
unique and wondrous.

The Night I Might’ve Fought a Vampire

Dave Williams44 Comments

Happy Halloween!

Well, it’s been a while since my last post here. Whew, it’s been several months. Time can fly by!

I’ve been keeping busy with family, work, a job search, and trying to learn about making video to help in that job search.

Speaking of videos, here’s a recent one that fits with Halloween: The Night I Might’ve Fought a Vampire. If the below video doesn’t work for you, here’s a link to it on YouTube. It’s mostly still drawings, with a touch of animation here and there, along with my voice-over.

I’m going to try to drop in more frequently on WordPress and not take such a long break away. I hope you enjoy the video 🙂

Smiley Rolling

Dave Williams62 Comments

Thank you to all those who wrote kind notes in my last post, “Sunrise, headlights,” about my Mom. She’s improving each day, gaining more energy, and getting steadier on her feet. I’m grateful!

My newest video is Smiley Rolling. It has the most complex animation that I’ve finished. The idea came from the upside-down smiley face in an emoji collection. I’ve seen that emoji many times when scrolling for emojis to include in text messages and comments on blog posts.

One time, the image popped in my mind of a smiley face rolling on the ground. That image stuck with me, and I had to draw it to see how it looked outside of my mind. I could’ve created a video with just a spinning smiley face, but another idea came to transform it. Transformation is one of my obsessions.

(I’ve learned a creativity tip is to explore your obsessions rather than trends.)

So I played with the smiley face transforming into a tennis ball, then baseball, then basketball … and so on. Which also includes non-sports-related objects.

I hope the video brings a smile for you.

The music in the video is Dill Pickles Rag, by C. L. Johnson and C. Chapman. I thought the peppy xylophone worked well with the animation. The song was recorded in 1908, so it’s in the public domain. The recording is from the U.S. Library of Congress.

Sunrise, headlights

Dave Williams64 Comments

A note, then a poem…

My mom was in the hospital twice in May. The first time, she stayed in the hospital for two days. Then four days the second time. Her health has improved, and she is recovering at her house. I’ve been staying with her for a bit, helping her with day-to-day stuff.

Of course it’s difficult to see Mom like this. But some things have lifted me. Listening to music and podcasts. Reading a novel and your blog posts.

There are various ways to measure success for creative people. One is when books / songs / paintings / whatever are sold. And certainly, it feels good when someone buys one of my books.

But another success is when your creation makes someone’s day better. Doesn’t have to be a stupendous, “whoa! your poem blew my mind!” kind of way. The creation can offer a quieter moment of joy. One that puts a smile on someone’s face.

Some food for thought. And a thank you to you bloggers out there. 🌞

***

Sunrise, headlights

Admiring the sunrise,
I gaze out the kitchen window
of my mom’s house

the horizon’s orange
fading up into blue

a car turns
into the cul-de-sac
behind the house

the car stops
in the street,
its headlights
like two tiny suns

I wonder if the person
is returning home
from a night shift
and stopped
in the street
to hear the
last part of a song
or news segment
or if they saw me
gazing out the window,

so I left the window
and wrote this poem.

Series of Locks — now a video

Dave Williams59 Comments

Back in February 2024, I posted a very short story called “A Series of Locks.” It came to mind in pondering which stories and poems that I’d like to translate into a video (a list that keeps growing!).

The idea for a keyhole came quickly for how to frame illustrations in the video. Later, I remembered how each episode opens in the Stranger Things series on Netflix. On screen, the words of the episode’s title are filled with imagery. Then the words zoom toward the viewer, while expanding in size. I liked that idea, and I used it for my video. This was really fun to put together.


A Series of Locks

The other passengers of the river cruise ship Calista were on the top deck to admire the series of locks in the Rhône River (“What amazing old world technology!” they were likely saying) and to admire the French countryside (“What amazing fields of lavender!” they were likely saying).

Meanwhile, I stood at the door to Duke Verneuil’s cabin. I had already snipped off a lock of my hair. With glue, I had sculpted the lock of hair into a delicate key. Now I used this key to pick the lock of the door to Duke Verneuil’s cabin. 

Once inside the cabin, I went to the closet and found the safe, knowing it was there because a safe was in the same spot in my cabin. My delicate key was put to use again, this time to gain access to the safe.

First, a surprise was inside. A series of photographs of what could be the Loch Ness Monster. But I do not have an educated eye, thus I could not tell if the photographs were authentic or clever fakes. Interesting, but not what I was there to find. 

Below the Nessie photographs was the prize. Dossiers on all the ship’s passengers. Duke Verneuil had made notes on our pets’ names, our mothers’ maiden names, the street names where we grew up, and more. His research was surely done to deduce the passwords and security questions for our online bank accounts. 

My suspicions were answered. And the rumors were true. The Verneuil fortune had been withered due to the duke’s gambling addiction, probably in extravagant casinos in places like Monaco.

Not all monsters lived in Loch Ness. Far from it. A monster stood on the deck a couple of levels above me, undoubtedly in lively conversation with other passengers. A monster who always wore dapper clothing and who fully knew how much his accent made men admire him and made women swoon. 

Now I had evidence of the monster’s digging information on us. I would bring the evidence to the authorities, who could link it to the cyber-theft that the duke surely has committed. The authorities can then bring this monster to justice and lock him in prison.

Hopefully, for many years.

Less is more

Dave Williams58 Comments

I tried a different approach in my first YouTube “short” … while the illustrations in my April in Paris video were created piece by piece, this new video takes something apart.

That something is “Less is more.” I snip away parts of the phrase in a kinda ironic way to see if the message holds up.

Also, I did some research for a little history behind the phrase:

It’s associated with architect Mies van der Rohe to describe the beauty and value of simplicity.

According to the Phaidon article “What did Mies van der Rohe mean by less is more?,” van der Rohe didn’t come up with the phrase. It’s from Peter Behrens, the boss of young van der Rohe when he helped design the AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin, starting in 1907.

However, as the Pixartprinting article “Less is More: The Philosophy Behind the Van der Rohe Quote” explains, the phrase began in Robert Browning’s poem “Andrea del Sarto.” The poem is from 1855, and can be read at the Poetry Foundation.

Anyhoo, to the video!

The peppy piano music in the video is “Swipesy Cakewalk” (fun name!) by E’s Jammy Jams, made available in the YouTube Audio Library.

Life’s yo-yos

Dave Williams48 Comments

After yoga
I ate yogurt
and listened
to Yo-Yo Ma’s
version of
“Carnival of the Animals: The Swan”
while meditating
on Yogi Berra’s
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

A knock on the
yurt’s door
was followed by
Yogi Bear’s voice:
“You about done in there?
We gotta pick up trash.
Some campers’re slobs, ya know.”

So I put 
the yogurt container
in the recycling bin
and went outside.

***
For reference and delightful reading: “The 50 greatest Yogi Berra quotes,” USA Today.

Book review: ‘Grinders’

Dave Williams56 Comments
front cover of Grinders with a Chinatown gate, street, and police car.

Grinders by C. S. Boyack

First, what’s a grinder? In this futuristic book, it’s a person who modifies someone with technology to “upgrade” them. It’s an illegal practice, so police departments have grinder squads to track down these criminals. 

However, we learn from veteran officer Lou Brophy that the grinder squad pretty much has its name and mission statement to get government grants. Mostly, cops on the grinder squad respond to calls that regular patrol cops would. At least that’s the case in the San Francisco Police Department in this novel.

Lou Brophy used to patrol on horseback, but that unit was phased out, and now he’s floating on the current of routine calls until he retires.

Enter younger cop Jimi Cabot, who is placed in the grinder squad because the bosses discovered a mistake that she made years earlier, when she was in college.

But Jimi doesn’t want to copy Lou’s goal of merely getting by in the job. She wants to fulfill the grinder squad’s mission by catching grinders, which she hopes will get her transferred to a more exciting department.

The relationship of Lou and Jimi is well done. Lou passes down wisdom, and Jimi ups the energy — to actually care about investigating grinders.

The chapters flip from Lou and Jimi’s activities to Nootropic, a scientist who’s trying to save his comatose wife. I’ll leave out the details of his plan, but I will say it’s quite clever.

As for world-building: this future is full of ads and imagery in public spaces. Think of the little TV screens on some gas station pumps. They’re yammering at you while you pump gas into your car. 

Well, this book injects steroids into that idea. Holiday-themed holograms are on buildings. Lou and Jimi’s cop car has ads on the side of it. “Holobarkers” are drones that fly to pedestrians and jabber ads at them. Craig has crafted a vibrant San Francisco of the future. Besides the many ads, a traffic grid controls the flow of vehicles. Also, Jimi’s apartment is underwater due to high sea levels, so the view from her windows has fish swimming by — and an octopus living on her balcony.

I became immersed in this colorful world and in the plot, and I’d recommend Grinders as an engaging read.

Grinders is available at Amazon, and check out Craig’s blog here.

April in Paris

Dave Williams76 Comments

A handful of years ago, I included the poem “April in Paris” in my book, The Dancing Fish. When thinking of which of my poems and stories to create videos of, this one came to mind.

(For Ella Fitzgerald’s lovely take on the song, click here for the YouTube video of her singing it in 1958.)

My video doesn’t include the song. But it does have my illustrations of the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Jardin des Tuileries, Ponte des Arts, and Louvre.

I wanted to try something different than each drawing popping up in its entirety. So I played with the illustrations appearing part by part. Like a jigsaw puzzle being put together. A kind of becoming — in how we can see buildings one at a time on a street, then see the entirety of the street. I really like how the process turned out.

Unlike my previous post, there are no brains in this video — I promise!

April in Paris

April in Paris is welcome
after a winter of discontent,
before the dog days of summer,
and ages before autumn in New York.

Now is the time for
wandering down new avenues
in comfortable old shoes,
seeing the sidewalk cafés
even on rainy days,
when raindrops snap
the drought of March’s nap
and stir our slow roots,
so we’re in hot pursuit
toward warmth and sun.
We stroll streets and gardens—
  hyacinths and tulips
  like bright teacups
  and lilacs and fresh greenery
  amid the city scenery.

In the elevator,
we rise up the Eiffel Tower
to see the colorful flower
mixed with gray building tops.
Then we’re back to sidewalks and shops,
crossing bridges over the Seine,
before indoors to the artful glen,
meandering through the Louvre,
which makes us want to mouvre
a paintbrush over the snowy field of canvas,
spreading yellow, red, and blue
and spring our own creation into view.

Finally, we rest at a café for coffee
and debates of philosophy,
staying so long it’s time for dinner,
smelling the sauces a-simmer.
Now our waiter is joined by a sommelier
encouraging us to stay through May,
she’ll guide us with wine to pair with foods, 
for there are still many new avenues
where we could wander
into a glorious summer.

Brain in a Jar

Dave Williams58 Comments

Inspiration can come in unexpected places.

My family has lived a short drive from the National Museum of Health and Medicine (in Maryland) for many years. For a while, I wondered about the exhibits inside, but kept putting off going there. Until a couple years ago, when my daughter Tess and I ventured inside.

It began as the Army Medical Museum during the American Civil War, and the centerpiece of the museum contains descriptions and specimens of medical treatment for soldiers who were injured during that war.

The museum covers advances in medical technology since then, and one large exhibit covers injuries to the brain and treatment. The exhibit includes a brain and spinal cord in a jar, which fascinated Tess and me. That’s what part of us looks like inside? Weird!

The memory-image of that brain itched at me. It wanted to be part of a project. So I made a video. It’s kinda weird, and it has illustrations of activities that someone might not be able to do if their brain is in a jar.

Also in the video are three photos that I took at the museum. If anatomy creeps you out, you may want to skip the video. (Although the photos are shown in short segments. No lingering looks that last for several minutes.)

The video is available on YouTube if this one gives you hassles and a headache (haha).