Instant Video #34 — Low by Coldplay, ukulele cover by Tammy Lin Foreman (6 min. 2009) Directed, shot, and edited by Lester Alfonso for the collaborative weekly video project that ran from 2008 to 2010.
Life is fleeting; anything can happen. Our circumstances can change at any moment. Today’s video brings it all back to me. Ten years ago, my life fell apart. My marriage ended abruptly, and with it, my partnership on a weekly collaborative Instant Video project. On Day 57, today’s archive video post coincides with a bot-curated Facebook “Memory,” that pointed me to my own blog from ten years ago. Shockingly thorough, the blog details the making of each Instant Video that we had made and includes song lyrics, notes, and even pictures. From October 2008 to March 2010, I released a new video on the site each week that I shot and edited. The videos were creative takes on live-off-the-floor musical performances by my then-partner, Tammy Foreman.
We released forty-nine videos in total until our sudden break-up in April 2010. Shortly after, the YouTube channel where our body of work was hosted, tammylinforeman, mysteriously went offline. With it, many Instant Videos were lost forever.
The pang of this loss is as sharp as losing my personal photo collection. Whistle quietly to yourself as you take a stroll down this junkyard of broken embedded links — like empty frames in a museum just after a heist. The unseen brilliance of these lost videos continues to grow in my mind. Incredibly, my video camera, VJ gear, hard-drives, and some original DV tapes also went missing at the same time. I was completely stripped of my self-labels and exterior attachments — husband or videographer? I was suddenly neither.
I never acknowledged the end of this project publicly until now. At the time, I did feel that we owed our followers some kind of explanation; we lived our lives in public somewhat. I vaguely remember working on a “final summary” post that I never had the heart to publish. The project is ongoing. Stay tuned. A retrospective would not be complete without the Instant Videos but it took ten years to get here.
Thanks to my friend Wayne Elliott, I was able to get copies of some videos that he had archived for himself.
Saturday, August 8, 2009 — A Day at the Beach. This is what we do. Go up to Meaford, Ontario and play a couple of shows at the Funny Farm at this year’s Electric Eclectics festival. We extend the weekend an extra night and camp at nearby Sauble Beach to try to avoid the busy holiday traffic. The blast of wind on the beach is cold. And we’re sitting on our camping chairs when Tammy picks up the ukulele and finds the chords to one of our favourite songs by Coldplay. This is what I do. I pick up the digital still camera and switch it to video mode and start filming Tammy. I film one whole take and I remember that all my gear is just inside the parked van only a few feet away from the beach. Why not try to make an Instant Video? Now. Anyway, it’s due time. We’ve decided to not put too much pressure on ourselves. But I continue to bring video gear around. And Tammy has the ukulele. Then, something truly spontaneous could emerge. This is what we can do. 21st century style, we can beam up this home movie from any café in the world with a WiFi. Be prepared. Something of the Boy Scout in me. To have the tools at the ready to document my Real Life. Opportunity + Preparedness = Success! Tammy quickly etches the chords to the song in the sand… It’s happening right now. It’s a simple day at the beach. This is what we do. With dismay, we realize later that we forgot to include our requisite heart. But the video playback reveals a droplet of water from Lake Huron. It apparently splashed on the lens on the upper right-hand side of the frame. And the droplet of water is heart-shaped!
Lester Alfonso, original blog entry from 2009
Low
by Coldplay
You see the world in black and white
No colour or light
You think you'll never get it right
But you know you might
The sky could fall could fall on me
The parting of the seas
But you mean more, mean more to me
Than any color I can see
All you ever wanted was love
But you never looked hard enough
It's never gonna give itself up
All you ever wanted to be
Living in perfect symmetry
Nothing is as down or as up... as us
You see the world in black and white
Not painted right
You see no meaning to your life
Yes, you try
Yes, you try
And all you ever wanted it was love
But you never looked hard enough
It's never gonna give itself up
All you ever wanted to be
Living in perfect symmetry
Nothing is as down or as up
Don't you want to see it come soon
Floating in a big white balloon
Oh, given your own silver spoon
Don't you want to see it come down
There for throwing your arms around
an sayin "you're a moment too soon"
Cause I feel low
Cause I feel low
Oh oh oh oh oh
Yeah I feel low
Oh no
Ohh
Ohh
Cause I feel low
Ahh
Cause i feel low
Oh oh oh oh oh
Yeah I feel low
Oh no
Ohh
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