Well, the Wrath of God fell on me in the last few days... For reasons I don't quite understand, my computer is acting crazy, and failing me. I can still create images and correct things in the Offertorium, but the machine refuses to render the new versions, and after churning for 15 hours overnight, all I have to show for it in the morning is seven minutes of black video.
Having spent hundreds of joyful hours trying to perfect the most elaborate 3D construction I had ever built in After Effects, I am very upset indeed that my machine, my software, something I don't understand is failing me. A virus, a plague has infected and taken over my binary number cruncher, and kernel panic has set in.
What sins have I committed to be thus punished? This is a Requiem I am working on after all, and the wrath of God is always an implicit threat... May be too much pride, too much confidence in my ability to push the machine and the software always further, to make the hardware faster, to extract the most exquisite juices out of mere diodes and transistors. They are failing me. Or am I failing them, who knows, I am at a loss...
I got very scared a couple of days ago, and started thinking of an alternative. I somehow have to make sure I have images for the Offertories, even if they are not what I originally intended. I had been going through hell trying to get things to work and getting nothing in return.
So I suppose it was only natural to think of and turn to Bosh, Hieronymus Bosh, the genius behind the most elaborate, imaginative, and incredibly vivid visions of Hell ever put to canvas. I found large scale images, and details of some of the most incredible individual nightmarish creatures ever to come out of a human mind. I found solace and modicum of peace in his totally surrealistic and incredibly detailed world, a world I can in some ways identify with and love. There is a beauty in these Beasts one can only fathom.
But then, could I actually scrap everything I had been working on so hard, and instead of exalting the beauty of Marie Antoinette's little jewel of a Theatre I had lovingly rebuilt out of virtual paper and millions of screen pixels, spend the whole fifteen minutes of the Offertorium in the nightmarish beauty of Bosh's world?
I woke up this morning wondering if I could possibly show both together in the same piece, and instead of the intended smooth flight of the camera through a perfect theatre, combine in some way in the two parts of the Offertories the story of my plight?
As Bosh well understood, and you can see it clearly if you look at his images carefully, Hell is more than just burning in eternal fires stoked by red devils with trident forks. Hell is here on earth for most of us. Hell is in the terrible things that happen every day around the world, hell is in the monsters that are actually born every day, in the plight of the deformed children, of the sick, of the maimed, of the soldiers missing parts of their bodies and often part of their brains, hell is in their brains forever shell shocked by what they did, saw, lived, and survived. Hell is the life of their wives and children who have to care for them and love them somehow, a wounded and forever changed version of the one they knew and loved.
Hell is in the hospitals, the insane wards, hell is in the streets were we released the wounded warriors of previous useless conflicts and made them homeless. Hell is something millions of people live in every day, starving, sick, slaughtered, bombed, shelled and shredded to pieces. Hell is seeing your child dying, or laying comatose in a hospital bed, brain dead, or barely surviving in an iron lung, with no end in sight.
That puts things in perspective. My Hell, the one I have lived in the last few days is not a real Hell, it is a Virtual Hell, and I just have to make the best of it with what I have in the time I have left.
Let's get back to work and somehow make something out of this mess!
Having spent hundreds of joyful hours trying to perfect the most elaborate 3D construction I had ever built in After Effects, I am very upset indeed that my machine, my software, something I don't understand is failing me. A virus, a plague has infected and taken over my binary number cruncher, and kernel panic has set in.
What sins have I committed to be thus punished? This is a Requiem I am working on after all, and the wrath of God is always an implicit threat... May be too much pride, too much confidence in my ability to push the machine and the software always further, to make the hardware faster, to extract the most exquisite juices out of mere diodes and transistors. They are failing me. Or am I failing them, who knows, I am at a loss...
I got very scared a couple of days ago, and started thinking of an alternative. I somehow have to make sure I have images for the Offertories, even if they are not what I originally intended. I had been going through hell trying to get things to work and getting nothing in return.
So I suppose it was only natural to think of and turn to Bosh, Hieronymus Bosh, the genius behind the most elaborate, imaginative, and incredibly vivid visions of Hell ever put to canvas. I found large scale images, and details of some of the most incredible individual nightmarish creatures ever to come out of a human mind. I found solace and modicum of peace in his totally surrealistic and incredibly detailed world, a world I can in some ways identify with and love. There is a beauty in these Beasts one can only fathom.
But then, could I actually scrap everything I had been working on so hard, and instead of exalting the beauty of Marie Antoinette's little jewel of a Theatre I had lovingly rebuilt out of virtual paper and millions of screen pixels, spend the whole fifteen minutes of the Offertorium in the nightmarish beauty of Bosh's world?
I woke up this morning wondering if I could possibly show both together in the same piece, and instead of the intended smooth flight of the camera through a perfect theatre, combine in some way in the two parts of the Offertories the story of my plight?
As Bosh well understood, and you can see it clearly if you look at his images carefully, Hell is more than just burning in eternal fires stoked by red devils with trident forks. Hell is here on earth for most of us. Hell is in the terrible things that happen every day around the world, hell is in the monsters that are actually born every day, in the plight of the deformed children, of the sick, of the maimed, of the soldiers missing parts of their bodies and often part of their brains, hell is in their brains forever shell shocked by what they did, saw, lived, and survived. Hell is the life of their wives and children who have to care for them and love them somehow, a wounded and forever changed version of the one they knew and loved.
Hell is in the hospitals, the insane wards, hell is in the streets were we released the wounded warriors of previous useless conflicts and made them homeless. Hell is something millions of people live in every day, starving, sick, slaughtered, bombed, shelled and shredded to pieces. Hell is seeing your child dying, or laying comatose in a hospital bed, brain dead, or barely surviving in an iron lung, with no end in sight.
That puts things in perspective. My Hell, the one I have lived in the last few days is not a real Hell, it is a Virtual Hell, and I just have to make the best of it with what I have in the time I have left.
Let's get back to work and somehow make something out of this mess!
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