09/03/2026
The Moonlight Edit
In a world where one million voices speak one million ideas into the apparent bottomless pit of a single set of ears,
I
tried
so
hard
to slow this story down.
I need time to stand still, so I can feel everything about this show. I don't want to trick myself into moving on, without grieving. I don't want to re-invent, without processing. Swan Lake is romance. It is four seasons. It will mark an era.
Over several full moons, I have been writing mediations to connect the themes of Swan Lake to broader moon-based stories. The meditations are meant to ground the purpose of storytelling to the spirited way humans self reflect. I will start emailing the meditations out on my mailing list, because I have 5000 emails a month to send and it's a goal to share more.
Slowly telling the story, taking time to accept the purpose of the story. This has been my activism against the pressure of one million voices, telling me 7 seconds is all I have. More captions, more footage, more AI packaging. I find it ironic that when we did Radium Girls, there was a giant glowing clock that ominously reminded us that time was running out. That's what it feels like right now - that the moon is competing with the clock to control the pace of our intake of poison.
Meditation has expanded my possibilities for an analog experiencing of building a show. I re-learned how to manually set my camera with the help of my friend Chelsea. I crumple real paper and string beads and use actual fabric to create mood boards. I refuse to generate captions with chatty even though I resent writing for the social machine.
"The Moonlight Edit" has two meanings. The first, it is the name of the preset I built to introduce The Tellers of our Swan Lake story.
The second, is the life edit.