The Philip Glass Ensemble - Koyaanisqatsi

I like to think of myself as a poet.

Perhaps this is an ambition shared by many people, for whom capturing ideas in words - perhaps fewer words than might otherwise be the case if simple prose were used - so that complex and original ideas might be communicated.

In more recent times, my creative writing has shifted naturally towards prose, and I am actively engaged in writing what will be my second novel.

My first I wrote when I was around 30, and it took me the best part of a whole year to write.

But then, writing a novel is never going to be an easy task. Whatever its quality.

Put simply, a novel is simply an extended work of prose, and its completion is as much a matter of discipline as anything else.

In this I can speak from experience, and even though few people even know of the existence of this piece of writing, those that have seen it, have said kind things about it.

More recently, I have taken it out of its now digital draw, and dusted it off metaphorically, and one of my carers, an avid reader, has read it over the Summer with a view to my editing it with the assistance of an external eye, and thereby completing it.

Whilst poetry has the benefit of brevity in most cases, if a novel consists of say 150,000 words, and my personal writing tariff for this second novel is 500 words per day, working six days a week, making 3000 words per week. The maths as to the time it will take simply to write it is not difficult to work out.

Editing and no doubt rewriting parts of it will now doubt add considerably to the time it takes.

500 words a day is a good manageable target, and most weeks I achieve what I have set out to achieve.

Sometimes I will take time out, but I miss not writing my tariff. And I have currently written almost 88,000 words. Perhaps about half of what I feel will be a sufficient total, to tell the story that is in my head and heart.

Strangely, this blog entry is about poetry. A form of poetry that is quite exceptional and unusual.

It is about a film, that is over 30 years old, and which to my knowledge, is almost the only example of its kind.

Because it is a full length film, one hour and 20 minutes, and part of a trilogy of films that were created over the course of more than 20 years.

They are an unusual trilogy of films, and probably most people will never have heard of them let alone seen them.

Because they are after all rather different from what we have come to expect of this medium.

Because they do not have a typical narrative, nor do they have actors or performers.

They are almost entirely without words, though they have a strong soundtrack, by composer Philip Glass.

And some aspects of the music are composed to words, although these words do not of themselves constitute by any means a narrative.

The title of the first film is Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, which is a native American word which is broadly translated by way of an introduction to the first film as life out of balance.

It is a remarkable achievement, and I suppose I feel fortunate to have seen the first film in this trilogy when it was first released in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s.

This coincided with the time that I was at university in London, and I suppose as a young undergraduate student, I was more willing and open to attending something that was not exactly a roaring success at the box office.

Although it did apparently make a small profit for the filmmakers.

It is one of the great benefits of the Internet, that it is possible to discover information about something as obscure as this film I believe still remains simply by searching on Google.

This week, I watched the first film in this trilogy once again, or perhaps it would be more truthful to say that I have listened to it.

Because whilst it is obviously something to be watched in its entirety, it is an  o aural experience as much as a visual one.

And I was reminded of the fact that I have had the great pleasure of having seen the film projected in a concert hall with the soundtrack played live by The Philip Glass Ensemble.

An unusual experience in the United Kingdom, which took place because I happen to  live close enough to  Brighton to have attended a concert performance given by Philip Glass himself, with His Ensemble.

I have never heard so many Californian accents in one room in Britain in my life.

Apparently, the tickets sold out within 20 minutes of being on sale, and it was only the fact that a close friend bought three tickets in order to take me along as a present that I was able to attend.

It is one of those privileged experiences that I will always treasure.

But I would encourage anyone who is able to to gain access to a copy of this film, which is I believe now available on DVD, after many years of wrangling over copyright which kept it out of print.

I have never seen the second and third films in the trilogy, though I do have copies of them.

One day, I will certainly devote the time needed to catch them, as I am sure they will be worth it.