One rainy day in Maui, not very long ago, I found myself huddled (in Hawaii… huddled?) in a pool side cabana, reading Jimmy Buffett's A Salty Piece of Land. At one point in the story his character is entertained on an old sailboat, captained by a woman of similar vintage. Over and over she played a scratchy 78 recording of Carlos Gardel, who the story reveals as a French-born Argentine singer of the early 20th century, best known for music to tango by.
Well, I hadn't heard of Gardel at the time, but was curious and equipped to learn… having set up a WiFi access point in my room, only about 75 meters above, and with a laptop at my side. Five minutes later, I had read his Wikipedia biography, ten minutes after that had the story's album downloaded from ITunes, and moments later was able to continue with my reading to just the right soundtrack on my IPod.
Since then, Gardel's music has become something of a favorite, played often, softly, on certain mornings, at our home in Carmel Valley. Today was one of those mornings.
Sitting at the window, once again reading (Business Model Generation this time), occasionally turning to gaze out on the foggy scene all around, I decided to pick up where I left off in my earlier impromptu digital melding of things old and new. There's an App for that, actually several…
I downloaded Super 8™ ,an App that mimics an old home movie camera, onto my IPhone, shot a simple roving walk-around, uploaded it (via ITunes) onto my Mac, edited it with IMovie, adding that Gardel soundtrack captured years earlier, uploaded the result to Vimeo, and embedded the result into this post to share with you here… all in less time than it's taking for the fog to clear from the valley below…
Foggy Morning in Carmel Valley from Richard Edward Bravman on Vimeo.