At last I finished putting together my small video response to our Hebridean journey (link below).

It’s been a bit delayed as I was waiting for music and poetry, then the tricky aspect of fitting the timing of music and poems together with images, and a few shots of the islands themselves.

(detail) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1555 (oil on canvas) by Bruegel, Pieter the Elder

I’ll return to this project with new improved equipment in the next few months, and with a clearer idea of how all the elements fit together. Definitely poetry readings by Louise will work best. Though as it is I find certain elements work beautifully. I like the way Lewis poet Ian Stephen’s reading leads into the journey, and Louise Palfreyman’s poems exquisitely capture the atmosphere of Callanish and Liceasto in Harris.

Listened to at a reasonable volume, you can hear me sing in the car after the Callanish section, Atzi mentioned he’d used this as inspiration for the intro music!

It’s the final section that really works for me though, with Louise’s ‘Hebridean Light’ and Atzi Muramatsu’s music soaring and suspenseful – I found it poignant, it made me think of the flight or fall of Icarus (also the painting by Breughel) and I couldn’t get the poem and music out of my head when I went off to bed. Various musical accompaniments suggested themselves; the poems being sung perhaps…

Anyway, enough of my havering, here it is…