I haven't been doing much writing lately, and that's because I'm near my due date for a rather large project I'm working on. Perhaps it's the Christmas in July talk that sparked the idea, but toward the end of the month or immediately after it ended, I got this idea that might be bright or ridiculous depending on your point of view. It came to my realization that having the virus still running rampant throughout the country and affecting people's holidays and normal celebrations that Christmas would also be affected. So...I got this crazy idea of making Christmas happen anyway. Christmas for me isn't really the gift giving or the food, it's a lot about the music and performances (and of course, family and friends). I had recently activated my YouTube channel by posting some videos on it for the mere purpose of cleaning my computer's memory, but it came to me that this would be a great way to share that part of Christmas that was so important to me.
I have a nice little collection of recordings I made at church for the purpose of sharing with family who couldn't come to see the church Christmas programs. Many songs are long gone, but I still had quite a collection, enough that I felt like since both family and friends will be out of a program this year due to the virus, I would make them available on my account. There were between fifteen and twenty songs I kept, and while I don't have any visual recordings of the performances I do have the audio and I discovered this fun little feature on my pictures at some point between July and now that allowed me to animate my photos, so I got to have double the fun putting these things together. The pictures may not entirely match the song, but still so fun to do.
In between putting those together, I posted a few other contributions that weren't holiday related and are already up on YouTube. Some of them aren't being noticed and no matter what I do with posting them places for people to access them for watching no one seems to want to do it. Sigh. That happens a lot with whatever I'm doing. I'm usually so excited about it, but can't seem to get others excited or interested. Perhaps one day someone will discover them. It can be discouraging and I've already questioned myself a few times whether my efforts were really worth it, but there's a drive within me that's being completely stubborn and refusing to give up.
Just to note, along with those choral recordings, I've made a few personal contributions. There are a few songs where I'll be singing or playing the flute, and a few of the singing songs will be displaying a little bit of my odd sense of humor that few people stick around me long enough to witness. It's all a great risk, and it's making this whole project a great undertaking. I have the videos scheduled to come out beginning slowly after Halloween, and getting a great influx following Thanksgiving.
We'll see if anything comes of it. I'll be making an official announcement soon.
I originally shared a video on this post with me singing a Christmas song for one of the ones planned for Christmas, but there were problems with the lyrics, so I had to take it down. Pity. It was a good recording. I'm posting this picture in place of it. I used a picture like this in the video, but added quite a few animations to it. I had lights stringing on the sides in the place of the black spaces with hollies in the corners. A couple of doves were inserted as well to cover up a flaw I didn't like and they were also perfect for the song, "Let There Be Peace on Earth."
