Snowy Saturnalia, web series progress, and shamanism searches
Happy Saturnalia! It’s on now (well, yesterday) through December 23rd, and we have a full moon tonight, and the solstice is on the 21st.
So feast and drink and all the rest, folks.
I doubt we’ll have a white Christmas based on the forecast for next week, but we did have a white start of Saturnalia:
Which is a bit weird since it was pissing rain all night from what I could hear, but it failed to wash away the snow and just made things extra soggy.
It’s getting to be the time of year when I do some baking. Last week I made 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies, freezing 2/3 of them in ziplocks with 2 cookies each for future snacks. This weekend I think I’ll make some oatmeal raisin cookies, and later in the week I’ll figure out something else to bake and freeze.
I think one of my 2022 New Year’s resolutions will be to not eat sweets unless I made them. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Some progress was made on the web series this week. For one thing, I picked up 3 URLs, 2 based on the name of the show (I’ll wait to mention that until the show actually launches because I’m paranoid like that). One is a longer version and the other is just the initials of the title, and I think I’ll make the longer version redirect the shorter initials-only version as the main website for the show.
The third is based off the main character, Nick White, because I figure some people might call the show The Nick White Show. And rather than just make that a redirect as well, I thought I’d build a second site from Nick’s perspective, because he’s a raging narcissist who would assume the show is all about him.
Well… I mean… he’s not exactly wrong, but still. I’m thinking of one episode I’ve written where he’s barely in it because he’s sleeping off the last night’s booze until he has to get up and go to a photo shoot. Meanwhile the other characters are running around in a crisis, but I envision Nick’s description of the episode would be “in this episode, I got a good solid day’s sleep and then I got a smashing good blowjob from a big-titted photographer’s assistant.”
So… I got a couple websites to build.
In other web series news, I’ve started recording some audio for the first prequel/ character interview. And I got a shot list/storyboard done for the first one, this being one page of that:
And then at some point I finally got around to unboxing and redressing a few more dolls that I’d ordered or picked up. Most are these are “extras” for crowd scenes or Nick’s ever-revolving collection of groupies:
In other news, I’ve started trying to research on shamanism and the connections with drumming and dancing. Good luck finding much of use on those topics on YouTube… most of what I’m finding is well-meaning but ultimately irrelevant stuff like folks who have uploaded “2 HOURS Native American SHAMANIC DRUMMING!!!” videos.
Well, I finally started searching for “shamanism anthropology” and I’ve found a couple videos of lectures and documentaries. Bottom line is I’m gonna have to do a bunch of reading.
Well, reading and working. I’ve been doing ritual work on the new and full moons for a couple months now (though I’ve been doing occult stuff and ritual work and meditation off and on for damn near 30 years now; I’ve just been focussed on other things for the last 5 or 6 years), and I’ve been getting feelings about needing to work with dance in those rituals as well as drums.
It happens that I have my altar in the same room that I do audio work in, and I have a variety of small hand drums, rattles, and other percussion stuff kicking around in there, so the last time a couple weeks ago I did a bit of drumming but was having a hard time finding my groove because I needed to get out of my head.
Anyway, it’s not something I’ll blog about in detail other than maybe the odd mention on the “witchy Wednesdays” blogs for the more superficial aspects or mentioning books as I read them.
But I figured I’d mention the pain in the ass of trying to find info… which, ultimately, I guess is irrelevant other than for confirmation of what ideas come to me.
And I figured I’d mention a documentary I found that others might find useful:
I’ve also ordered an Irish bodhran, because it felt like that was the right kind of drum for me to get with my heritage. It should arrive in January sometime.
Let’s wrap this up with a couple more pics:
