Well, I needed to practice uploading videos to YouTube, so I made this video for my first trial.
This video is made with a series of photos that I took when I participated in an artists' residency program in Umbria, Italy, in 2009. They are a little bit old, but very memorable for me. I spent a couple of days in London before Italy and I took these photos from a window of an airplane from London to Rome.
Above Europe - From England to Italy
The weather was very good and I was so excited to see the aerial views of Europe clearly as if I was looking at a map and it was totally unexpected. Seven Sisters, the group of chalk cliffs in Southern England, is one of my favorite places in England. I have been to this place several times, but this was the first time to see it from above. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The English channel was narrower than I had thought. Soon after we left England, the French coast began to appear on the right. The city of Paris was easy to recognize with its size and the all the roads radiating out from the Arch of Triumph. I was surprised that the snow capped tops of the Alps looked very close from the window. When my final destination, warm Italy, appeared, my heart was filled with excitement. I wish I had more shots, but I did not think about making a video like this at the time, but still I hope people can feel the flow of the flight.
The music is called 'Softly She Departs' by Paul Mottram. It is from the list of YouTube's free music, so I think it is OK to use it. It is kind of somber... I chose this piece first, from its impression and its length and of course the title. I don't know what the lyric writer meant with this title. It could be death or a broken heart. But I did not mean those things for this video. I simply wanted to mean departure from one place. Traveling in Europe reminds me strongly that I am a sojourner. Even if I have a longing to stay in the place where I love, I cannot stay there forever. A sojourner's life is like a traveler's. I am just passing through. It is kind of sad, but because of that, I treasure every single moment of being there. I was thinking that kind of thing when I was looking at these aerial views.
