{"id":194,"date":"2011-05-21T22:51:48","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T02:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/05\/21\/balloons\/"},"modified":"2011-05-21T22:51:48","modified_gmt":"2011-05-22T02:51:48","slug":"balloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/05\/21\/balloons\/","title":{"rendered":"Balloons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vidya and I were driving home from the train station the other day when something caught her eye. In the distance, above the trees; a kite, she declared. But as we got closer that assessment seemed less likely. The unidentified flying object was moving too far beyond any conceivable anchoring point to be tethered to the ground. A hot-air balloon? Too small. And too large to be a single helium balloon. Our route was taking us on a direct collision course with the object. As we crested a hill it swept over the road right before us. Not a single helium filled balloon but a bouquet of them, all different colours, tied together. It was like somewhere, far away, in its dying breath a rainbow had cast its seeds to the slipstream like a dandelion. The balloons were not rising nor descending. They were simply drifting. A perfect balance met between their ethereality and their infinitesimal gravity. A small token of childish glee in an otherwise bland landscape, an uneventful day. <\/span><\/p>\n

They passed above us like serendipitous magic and then they were gone.<\/p>\n

In our daily lives, there’s so much going on from a sensory point of view that it’s hard to imagine anything leaving much of an impression. The logistics alone of creating anything special or meaningful out of so much chaos is mind boggling when you get right done to it. And for it to come down to a precise moment – an unplanned for, living, breathing moment of enchantment – well it’s something remarkable. I’m remarking on it now, after all.<\/p>\n

I drove by the same spot today. The balloons had faded from my memory. Until I saw them again. Snagged in a tree in a meadow, off the side of road. They were smaller now, fewer. Batting against the branches in the wind. Lifeless.<\/p>\n

I thought of the first time I was ever on a film set. I wasn’t even fully aware that I was on the set<\/em>. There were cameras and lights and people but it was hard to say where the “stage” was per se. There was simply so much stuff lying around that I couldn’t visualize what part of the room a lens could be trained upon that wouldn’t betray the scene. Then the camera rolled and I watched on a monitor. The shot was a perfect and precise. On screen there was only the fabricated. Nothing of the real world – the chaos strewn about just out of frame – could be seen. As perfectly constructed as that shot was in the final film, I would always know that just around the corner was a light stand, that just above the actor’s head was a flag, that crowded around, just beyond view, and holding their breath were a dozen crew members awaiting the all-clear to sweep in and do their thing.<\/p>\n

I knew the balloons didn’t just disappear once we passed them by to carry their magic and joy onward to another lucky couple. I knew that they wouldn’t just go on drifting over the Earth in limbo in perpetuity. I knew that at some point they would wind up as litter; no more fantastic than discarded coffee cup or an old tire. But for that moment when all the pieces were aligned, the chaos momentarily hidden and the crew all holding their breath, it was perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why I love movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-from-the-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}