Hi friends. I have published a video on how to make turmeric sunrise eggs over on YouTube. Also on my Facebook page.

This is the first in my series of how-to videos (with a twist.) I don’t have a series title yet, I’m thinking: Welcome To the Cabin.

HOW I MADE THIS VIDEO

I shot this video yesterday at my cabin on Orcas Island. The concept came to me in a brainstorming session last week. Here’s my (illegible) note from my notebook:

I’ll translate:

Comedy/Perf(ormance) 11/5
Cooking How-to / Meditation on Life
turmeric eggs and life
expand this? Trojan Horse videos
How-tos, pro tips, etc. etc. [illegible note]

So the basic concept is a trojan horse. A spoken word ramble on something that interests me disguised as a how-to video. I am a self-taught cook, so I figured I could talk through a recipe and intersperse cooking steps with thoughts about life. I figured somewhere in the frisson between recipe and philosophy: comedy.

Early last week I tried out the concept during my daily hikes. I would talk into my iPhone while walking down Turtleback Mountain. From these recordings I learned that I needed to simplify my philosophical asides. The first couple of run-throughs were too long, 15 and 12 minutes.

I took the rough concept and wrote a loose script, in note form:

Last Thursday I performed the concept at the Doe Bay Cafe open mic on the otherwise very quiet eastside of Orcas. As is often the case I had the attention of a handful of audience members (most people go to the Thursday open mic to socialize and drink.) But my little audience seemed engaged and they laughed at a few key lines, which I took note of.

I forgot to record the performance with my phone, but I think it took about 10 minutes (still too long.) As you can see from the live performance script, I talked about a lot of different things: quitting your job, your phone is not your friend, quit your job, etc. I decided to focus on just one of these for the video.

I chose money as my muse. I wrote a new script, in note format, in my notebook:

Yesterday I cleaned the tiny kitchen in my cabin and recorded the video. I edited today at my “office,” really the extraordinarily beautiful Orcas Island Public Library:

I spent about two hours editing the video…the majority of the time was spent teaching myself to cleanup audio with compressors, noise gates, and what not (thanks, Professor Google.) I didn’t do any color correction; I’ll save that for my next video.

Meanwhile, as I write this, a windstorm has knocked out the power. A common experience on Orcas Island in the winter. For some reason the Internet is still working. And so. I post this.