"There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine. There can be breakages in Japanese. That is no programme. That is no color chosen. It was chosen yesterday, that showed spitting and perhaps washing and polishing."

I try to make a daily practice of meditation- and I say try because meditating, for what it appears to be on the exterior, can sometimes be extremely difficult for me. Sitting (almost) perfectly still and letting thoughts come and go without too much acknowledgement requires patience and practice. My mind seemingly refuses to let itself shut off, and I use this practice as a reminder that I have a greater control over my consciousness when I simply let myself be.

Reading Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons felt meditative, because the less I tried to extrapolate any real meaning from the words, the more I enjoyed its natural rhythm and cadence. This line stuck out to me because of the words gratitude, medicine, Japanese, no color, yesterday, washing and polishing. These phrases felt particularly meditative and in a way about the act of meditating itself. The word Japanese in particular reminded me of Japanese ambient musicians and I connected it to Stein's poem because of the similar obscured structure and drone. Inspired by the album covers of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Ryuichi Sakamoto, I decided to use a 1:1 format.

An image I often focus on in my mind when I meditate is a pool of water. It helps redirect my focus inward and quiet intrusive thoughts. I went to the Charles Riverbank and took some short clips of the flow and reflection of light on the surface.

My process was informed a lot by watching tutorial videos for After Effects and simply letting myself explore the different effects and animations presets. I didn't storyboard, because I wanted to let myself be guided and inspired by my workflow itself. While I'll definitely be using storyboards in the future, I'm glad I felt unconstrained by a singular idea and more inspired by a larger concept. I loved trying to visualize how it feels to meditate in a very difficult and unfamiliar program.

The hardest issues I faced were clipping and rendering- it made it difficult to really visualize the final product when the timeline was skewed and wouldn't sync the audio to the video, or my transitions. I'm hoping I can figure out a way to make After Effects run a bit smoother for future projects.