During the 2010 Rochester L’Abri Conference someone who attended my workshop commented that film is powerful as art partly because it embraces multiple senses. Color, line, lighting, shape and motion fill our sight. Music, dialogue, background sounds, and silence fill our hearing. And it all combines in some mysterious way to fire our imagination with story and images.

Sometimes the images don’t even have to be connected by story or a single narrative to be effective as art. As something that makes us stop, and wonder, and for a moment be drawn outside our ordinary into other spaces and realms. To dream and remember that against all odds each tiny slice of reality has its own significance in a wider tapestry of meaning known only to the One that holds the far-flung galaxies in his hand.

This video is like that, images that almost force us to make up a narrative as we watch, but resist the temptation. Just enjoy them. Let them spark other images, ideas, words, phrases, slices of time that were long forgotten.

The video is the work of Lindsay Kerns, who is applying to MFA programs in creative film production. She attended the 2010 L’Abri Conference, though sadly we didn’t meet. Her giftedness and creativity is obvious, and a reason for gratitude. God’s grace, evidenced once more in this broken world in his people.

For those who might be interested, the song that accompanies the video is “Live For the Sounds” by Brooke Waggoner from her CD Heal For the Honey. (The lyrics are listed below.)

Producing/Directing Reel from Lindsay Kerns on Vimeo.

“Live for the Sounds”

Why do you ask, do you ask me why?

I live inside my head.

You know this.

Croon to the tune of your own sweet sighs

I'll chant and chant and chant this anthem

Beat on the walls and on the ground

To hear the floor and feel the sound

Drink all da' moisture you can down

Of heaven's juice until you drown

Stitch up your lips with pins and please

Never never tell my secrets

We are the ones without disease

But medicine is still much needed

Beat on the walls and on the ground

To hear the floor and feel the sound

Drink all da' moisture you can down

Of heaven's juice until you drown

Why do you ask do you ask me why?

I live for the sounds and gain their wisdom.

Croon to the tune of your own sweet sighs

Beat on the drums 'til you grow numb.