mini shorts: "drift," by Rachel Jeong

“Wonder if the weight of it

Is keeping everybody up at night

Worry doesn't change a thing

Rather feel it all than feel alright

Somеtimes when I drift away

That's the only timе that I'm myself”

- “afterthoughts,” renforshort

This film corner, we want to share two short films created by our Editor-in-Chief, Rachel J. 

They both serve as teasers for another, bigger short film upcoming this summer. Both are artistic symbols of this month’s theme, spectrum. How we can all experience different–often contradictory–emotions simultaneously, while everyone seems to experience that at some point in their lives. Using a digital camera with the same footage for each, the paired short films hope to encapsulate and help process what it is to experience and perceive time and consciousness.

“drift,” happy version.

"drift," happy version, Word for Thought

“We all experience time. It’s part of the human experience. Time is colorless. Time is timeless. Really that’s because time is all colors (sepia, black and white, bursting reds, hazel fuzzy yellows), and holds all the different shapes (circles, lines, squiggles) and positions of past, present, and future, and whatever other dimensions there are. It is all things at once, and yet somehow, it always seems to work out. It’s chiastic, parallel, balanced. 

This is about anticipatory/anticipated nostalgia. About translating the current moment as a memory, which is why the digicam works so well. About the derealization that happens when you are no longer connected to your reality--when you’re drifting. When you feel at home in yourself, so it’s hopeful. Different cultures and societies perceive time differently, i.e. through a monochronic or polychronic perception. All this confusion and simultaneously-coexisting perceptions manage to create one cosmic time, natural or constructed, and I can’t help but see it as universal God, not necessarily religious, but a huge, enveloping spirituality that brings us what we experience as life. It’s part of the human experience to perceive time and perceive and experience it differently.”

“drift,” sad version.

"drift," sad version, Word for Thought

“This one seems more somber, a remorseful remembering and living of time. The sadness that comes from knowing that the definition of life is that it needs to be gone again. And that it’ll be over in a blink of an eye. Then there’s more that comes from knowing you’re derealized, not truly living in the present, even when it won’t stop for you. The purpose of doing different ideas for the same two footages is to represent how multiple truths can exist at once, how you feel a combination of different feelings simultaneously about the same thing. Which is why "drift/(:(" fits so perfectly, the smile and frown. How beautiful.

w/ covers of "drift/(:(" and "someday i'll get it" by alek olsen.”