I made a video, wheeee!

18 Comments

Here’s my third video. The first one needs to be redone. It’s embarrassing. The second one was an attempt at humor. It’s blessedly brief. This one (below) is a retelling of my short SF story, A Tall Blond Alien Girl.

It’s square so you can see it OK on a phone. Sound suffers on phones, though.

…

Thank you for your patient interest in my stuff.

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

18 thoughts on “I made a video, wheeee!”

    • M. Talmage Moorehead

      Thank you, Chickensconsigliere! I’m not really an enigma, though, just your average burned out (and thankfully retired) pathologist who finally has enough time to breathe, read, think and try to write. I hope I can do more videos, this one was fun. The story I’m working on now is probably too long for video, but I don’t know. Maybe it will be OK if I can keep the plot moving. Thank you for your encouragement. 🙂

      Reply
      • chickensconsigliere

        You have a great voice for it and intriguing stories. Keep it up. I’m looking forward to the days when I have time to really breathe, think and write. I’m close enough now that I stop to imagine sometimes what it will be like.

        Reply
  2. patternsofsouldevelopment

    This is a very interesting enterprise, to start producing the listening version of own writing – I feel that the idea has great potential and it’s worthy of exploration. Practice makes the Master, and as you say, the 3rd one is already much better than the 1st. I love the atmosphere, the voice and the images – perfect choices, as always – and I know that from here to there, you have a very short stride to reach perfection. I would suggest the voice maybe closer to the mic – maybe a different kind? (I remember you saying that you too, thought something related to volume); longer pauses between thoughts, with interruptions so that the listener may well ruminate what he/she just heard. Your voice is peaceful, mesmerizing, charming, but I feel you can put more vibration in it? Like, a bit livelier?
    But these are only my thoughts and impressions may differ.

    I always love your writing, with the smart, young, fresh, seamless way of inserting some non-mainstream ideas into our heads – the thing is that, if the world didn’t have a Jules Verne or an Isaac Asimov, we would probably still be at the beginnings of the Industrial Era.So,besides the artistic-intellectual emotion, I am maybe even more moved by the fact that this author here is totally dedicated to the cause of matching science with spirituality for the mind and soul of people who otherwise would have no idea that this existed. I am saying all this because I can absolutely anticipate the fact that you are going to make some impact in the spiritual-sci-fi genre.

    Reply
    • M. Talmage Moorehead

      Thank you for your kind and wise guidance, Mirilia, and the positive feeling you always give me about the future. I’m in the process of trying to decide whether to jump into my “editing business” that I’ve been totally neglecting, or to focus exclusively on my writing, or possibly to explore this new video stuff some more. After hearing your words, I’m going to focus entirely on the writing and use the videos as a means of hopefully increasing my exposure as a writer. This is the day that I’m getting off the fence and back into the writing trenches. Thank you so much for always being there for me. 🙂

      Reply
      • patternsofsouldevelopment

        What I started to realize is that we, our older generation, got it all wrong. We keep on believing that it is all about about the value we have to offer, so we keep staying in our narrow den to “polish more”, while it’s not about polishing, and it’s not always about the quality of your work – just make a trip to the bookshops around, see the kind of literature that has the most success. Currently I am working with a writing&publishing coach, Mark Malatesta, who has an amazing record of happy publishing stories over the five years since he is in business (before he used to be an agent, so actually his experience goes vast in time and expertise)- just consultation, as my work is done already. He surprised me by saying that 51 % of a published author is entrepreneurship, 49% is being a good writer.
        He’s perfectly right- time and again, we see how the rug is being pulled from under real value, just to be shifted towards media presence.
        Under this light, I truly believe that both you and I are already too full of value, so it’s time to tackle that other 51%. And in this regard, you are already better than I am, because you have been present on your site, though scarcely, but you are way further than I am (no jealousy here, just dry statement :))
        So I believe it would be a good point to start exploring the possibilities that YouTube is offering. I did my search, looking for Storyform, and there was another guy there with videos about the value of storytelling in all its forms, I believe, but you are not under your name either.
        So, you can now open your sails and post your videos, and be sure that, ten postings from now on, you are way further on than you are here today. But meanwhile, also try and gather a collection of short stories and start publishing, be it even as an indie writer; by the time you have hit a reasonable number of audience members, your book will be ready.

        Reply
        • M. Talmage Moorehead

          Again, your advice is pure wisdom. Thank you. I’ll check out Mark Malatesta and see if I can get my “platform” off the ground. It’s very difficult for me to promote myself. On an (unenlightened) emotional level it feels somehow morally wrong, and at the gut level it feels like a setup for humiliation. I guess it’s true what they say, that success requires “being afraid (a.k.a. courage), being sloppy (not perfectionistic) and taking action every day.” Also, I have trouble with staying focused on one thing. I have too many areas of intense interest. Also, the computer tech aspects of mailing lists, newsletters, wordpress.org websites (which I’ve given up on finally), and facebook ads are a frustrating, time-consuming endeavor for me. The computer tech aspects alone stopped me from expanding the platform I began growing years ago. My little mailing list is old and stale now. It’s just too much technical headache to write to them. I’ll keep going with the YouTube videos and see if that’s manageable for me. And I’ll check out Mark. Thank you for telling me about him! 🙂

          Reply
  3. Donny Duke

    It’s the general view of science, a cornerstone of skepticism, that you can’t know anything for sure, none of the ultimate questions are answerable, but if perhaps that’s not true, and we can know. It’s just that reality, or whatever you want to call everything, just keeps getting bigger. What I describe in that article isn’t an out of body experience but a little known one called an overhead experience, where you flow or shoot up out the top of your head into the regions of ‘you’ overhead, and what i mean is it’s as though you are still in your body, or in you I should say, not the physical body. Before that experience I had experimented with out of body quite a bit, and that’s not a spiritual but an occult or metaphysical experience. Going over your head is of a whole different character, as there’s no capaleptic trance or any going outside the walls of yourself so to speak, and it’s not mundane in feeling but overwhelmingly spiritual, ecstatic I might say. Maybe it’s not something you’ve heard about? It’s been a part of some esoteric spiritual traditions but has not yet made its way onto the net that I can find. After that initial overhead experience, I’ve had several more, but none as far as Supermind, what my yoga calls the higher self. I don’t subscribe to perspectivism but feel we share the same reality, and neither do I agree with the skeptics: I feel we can know reality, like I feel we can know God and not just believe. You got to figure that reality’s not just all pell-mell open to any interpretation but laid out in a certain way, and it’s possible to discover it.

    Reply
    • M. Talmage Moorehead

      Thank you, Spira. It’s the end of summer and I’m just starting to shake off last winter’s lethargy. I think I’ll visit a tanning booth this winter and see if it helps keep my energy levels up. Take care, my good friend.

      Reply
  6. guidelinesweb

    I’m not a critic, nor do I have any desire to be a famous writer. I am only an ardent fan who I LOVED this! Thank you so very much for sharing the fruits of your Soul with us all, Talmage. 💞

    Reply
  7. Donny Duke

    Your voice is simply wonderful to listen to. You choice of music is near perfect, and the images fit quite well the story’s line, except they are a little short at the end. It’s the second time I’ve ‘read’ the story, and I appreciate it more now, of course, as it’s been shown to me like you have to stop a child and get them to look at something. I didn’t like the style at first reading, the what I felt cocky sound of it; it’s not so poetic ring. It’s come home to me now, and my criticisms melt. It’s well written.

    I’m probably no different than anyone else in that what I’d like to comment on is your theology, and I want to show you mine. Have you ever considered that the different religions are many mansions in the house of God, to put it like you have heard it covertly spoken about I’d imagine? Not an exact correlation, a mansion a religion, but something like that. And you seem to feel we, individually and as a race, don’t interpret (rightly or wrongly) what those mansions send us but just get it handed to us verbatim, and it’s here that religion would mess with you the most. Anyway, here’s my take on things, and it’s a more or less scientific telling, what it seems you’re quite into.
    https://www.shift.is/2015/03/whats-bigger-than-the-universe-hang-on-whats-bigger-than-everything/

    Reply
    • M. Talmage Moorehead

      Thank you, Donny Duke, for sharing your insightful and generous evaluation of the story and video. I too noticed that some of the music didn’t fit and I needed more diverse imagery toward the end. I rushed it in an attempt to suppress my perfectionism. Someone said, to succeed you have to be doing things that frighten you and doing a messy job of them every day… or words to that effect, I guess. Perfectionism and fear are my two biggest enemies in creative matters, but they’re both valuable at times, especially in other contexts, such as pathology.
      I just read your post that you linked. That must have been an eye-opening experience driving in the truck and having an out-of-body experience like that. Your description is profound. I also appreciate this quote from your post…

      “It’s not different religions interpreting differently the same God; it’s that God is bigger than name and form, too big for any man-made religion to encompass (since God is the not-God too), or for any human spirituality to discover in his totality, and the different religions each focus on different attributes of God, attributes that are so very creative that upon entering the universe they become beings unto themselves in such an identity with God they see themselves God or some expression of the Absolute.”

      This is similar to my views on world religions, although I must emphasize that my spiritual views are still evolving at my tender age (62). I think all the world religions have truth to them and all probably have errors, though I can’t rule out the possibility that some group somewhere has it all correct. Maybe even an Earth-based religion, but I doubt it. I think there are probably simulations within simulations, but ultimately I envision a Reality in which a Supreme Being (who loves to surf) lives with all of us beside a great ocean with wonderful waves. I see us asking for a simulation (229 H Street, it’s called in one of my stories) in which God is not physically present. We asked for this because each of us wondered what we would be like without God’s immediate influence. As far as current religions of our time are concerned, I see them (in my limited understanding) as making rituals and ritualistic rules that too often take the place of truly moral behavior. Additionally, I see moral behavior being misunderstood as almost exclusively abstaining from negative actions when it seems to me that moral behavior is largely about actively doing positive things. When it comes to revelation of inspired info from God, I doubt that there’s a perfect book or guru or religious leader in terms of being able to deliver completely accurate information about reality and God’s relationship with us. I think we have to pick and choose things that resonate with us personally, and come to a spiritual synthesis for ourselves, knowing that whatever scenario we wind up with, it will likely bear little resemblance to the ultimate reality beyond our simulation, assuming the idea of simulation is correct, which may not necessarily be the case, as far as I know. I think that we all need to be ready to one day admit that our sacred views of reality are just as apt to be flawed and incorrect as my sf fictional version of God as the Great Surfer, a view that I hang on to simply because I like it, not because I think it’s accurate. I think that religious belief systems are the bathwater and moral behavior is the baby (things like being trustworthy, helping the poor, the orphans and the widows while opting not to become a world banker).

      Reply

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