Turning on the camera, or more accurately put, pressing “record” on my iPhone.

Piglet noticed that even though he had a
Very Small Heart, it could hold
a rather large amount of Gratitude.
– AA Milne

 To all of you who backed the
Aartz West Kickstarter,
I can’t thank you enough!

What does it take to create a Kickstarter campaign? If you check out their website they have a lot of excellent guidance. My first challenge was to create a video. Yikes! Quirky, tricky, new (for me) technology! And so many possiblities!

Athena (a barred owl) is my muse. She whispers in my ear on the field of battle (my studio) as Athena the Greek goddess did in tales of yore to assist Hercules and Perseus.

You probably have seen parodies of that part of the filming process where they say “Take one, Take two?” How about “Take 35?” Each “take” is a do-over because the preceding video clip was unsatisfactory for some reason. I did many, many takes all alone in the studio with my tripod and iPhone.

Oh, and Athena was there too.

My teaching mantra has always been “listen to your muse.” Most of my students over the years have heard me say “let your muse come out and play.” Because of this I tried to think of a good way to integrate the concept of a muse as inspiration into the video. Ultimately it didn’t fit, but I thought I’d share  one of the “takes” with you.

I’ll write more about the Kickstarter process soon.