First Shot @ "Text"

A Coincidence?

Music Videos and Minimalism a Parallel?

Every new in-person class serves as a laboratory. Whether it’s hypnosis or Tom’s Dangerous Writing workshop or the Cacophony Society or the est training, it all boils down to storytelling. At least for me, it does. During my salad days, music videos were just coming into homes. Sure, we’d always had television commercials, but here was the music equivalent. If you want the gory details, look for the book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution. Without television at my place, I watched videos at the laundromat. I watched them on Friday nights at Geoff’s house while getting wasted. A person could hope to see their favorite artist, but it came down to the luck of the rotation. I Want My MTV explains the programming tricks and backstage politics.

Me, I was just captivated by performers who tried to hide the fact that they could not dance. This included the song “YMCA”, which taught itself to the viewers; and “Walk Like an Egyptian”; and The Talking Heads’ “Once In a Lifetime”, with one hand making quick chops against the opposite arm; or Madonna teaching us to “Vogue” by framing her face with her hands, or the dreaded “Macarena”. Picture it. A billion left feet learned to dance! Benetton sweaters were shining a healing light on the Rwandan massacres. It was the age of Live Aid. “We Are The World.” “That’s What Friends Are For.” And, “Sun City.” Progress was in the air, as was a hint of world peace. Pat Benatar would lead us out of darkness and into the light.

In Tom’s Dangerous Writing workshop I was still fuzzy on the concept of Minimalism. Fuzzy until Geoff’s T.V. showed a commercial for Skippers Seafood Restaurants.

In the commercial, the same limited number of elements were presented and they all suggested Skippers: Branded napkins, branded cups, uniformed servers, store signage, happy families eating fried fish. In the new MTV world, pop songs played out to a similar background of limited elements that appeared and accumulated to gain emotion and power as the music reached its crescendo. It’s no surprise that young directors like David Fincher worked back and forth, doing commercials, then videos, awaiting a chance to direct a feature film.

In the same way that everything was a different version of the same thing on the commercial, the style of Minimalism pared back stories to the basics and replied on repeating them and morphing each element to grow it with new power and meaning. Each time any element reappeared, it carried more meaning and associations.

The style wasn’t called Minimalism because it used terse language. The actual intent was to keep the elements to a minimum and to use them more effectively. And few storytellers did that better than music videos.

Think of the apples in the video for “Mr. Brightside.” Recently I mentioned the apples to a friend, and he asked, “What apples?”

He’d seen the video a hundred times, and now he watched it again and saw apples in almost ever shot. Red apples, green apples. The apples get thrown from shot to shot, they’re the go-to device for transitioning, like the rules of Fight Club. They carry the eye. This friend is a little dazzled by the apples now, they work so well yet seem so low-key.

With that in mind, I’ve wanted to teach an in-person class that uses classic music videos to demonstrate Minimalism. Also, the keys to good hypnosis are rhythm, rhyme, repetition and novelty. A good video uses all of those.

Which brings us to a new class called “Text, Lies, and Videotapes,” to be taught by Chelsea Cain and moi. Note: All the money goes to Chelsea because she has access to the big theater venue. Lest you think I’m hustling, all the money from the Thursday night in-person workshop goes to the Pixie Project animal rescue. I won’t see a cent from either the new class or the on-going workshop.

If music can be cut like movies, why can’t fiction be cut like the montage of a film? Why can’t fiction be as accessible and instantly engaging as a music video? For a closer look at the idea, watch “Mr. Brightside” with the sound off; in effect, watch it for the story’s plot. Then listen to the song, minus the video; i.e., listen for the story’s voice. For extra credit, use earbuds and listen to it only with your left ear. Then, only your right. And consider how that changes the experience.

As always, everything is an experiment. The details of the class are below. All writing assignments will arise from the videos. If all goes well, I’ll be doing more about videos, here on my ‘Stack.