At the suggestion of an online friend, I have made a video entitled “Like An Angel Passing Through My Room,” and I’d like to offer this as a little Christmas gift to those who frequent this blog. It is intended to be an artistic representation of hidden feelings I had as a gay man who repressed his sexuality for decades. Thus the title, Hidden Reverie.
The music that accompanies the images is a song that was performed by the singer Sissel when she was the guest artist several years ago at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas concert. That concert to me was … magical. Sissel’s voice has a transcendent quality about it – lovely and pure as a mountain spring – which is appropriate since she is Norwegian. This, combined with the emotion she put into every number made the evening unforgettable.
One of the highlights for me of that evening was her rendition of Like An Angel Passing Through My Room. She explained during the concert that the song was intended to evoke the image of a quiet reverie on a dark winter’s evening. The live performance was transportive, and as I contemplated my life as closeted gay man, it seemed to speak to me of those years of secret thoughts and desires.
So, I offer to you this little video, thinking perhaps it might strike a chord with some of you as well.
beautiful, tender, discreet and generous ...
ReplyDeletethank you for this beautiful illustration of your quest and your heart's longings, whose spirit resonates with my own desire to align my actions, words and thoughts-dreams.
merry christmas...
Beautifully done!
ReplyDeleteWhat program(s) did you use to compile this? How did you prepare and post it to your blog?
You've inspired me to try something like this myself. Thank you for this wonderful gift which certainly resonates with me and is evocative the many man-crushes and the few bromances I've experienced in my journey over the decades from my teens to early old geezerhood.
Again, a wonderful vid. Thanks for sharing with us. I hope you'll do another soon.
Sissel is the best! And Like an Angel Passing Through My Room is the best of the best!
ReplyDeleteThanks for setting the ethereal mood for the day...
Wow! I too attended the Sissel concert and was, for those few moments while playing your video, transported back to the same enchantment I felt then. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThe wistful images added a more personal aspect and I couldn't help but think of
Poe:
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
Nevertheless, it is my experience that passing angels do exist . . . sometimes they stay a while.
@Libellule - Merry Christmas to you, too! Thanks as always for your comments.
ReplyDelete@Ned - I used Windows Movie Maker. It turns out it's fairly easy to use, and you can upload videos through the normal posting template.
@Trey - Wow again, Trey. Thank you for sharing the beautiful poem and also your experience with passing angels that sometimes stay awhile ... :)
Trey, I also have to say that I enjoy the poems that you've posted. I love poetry, prose and the arts. A very beautiful movie about Keats, is worth seeing: Bright Star.
ReplyDeleteHis Last Sonnet:
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No -yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever -or else swoon to death.