MAKE WAVES |
| Meet ruth weiss, a brilliant artist and Holocaust survivor.
She prefers
to have her name written in lowercase
for aesthetic reasons, but she also mentioned to me that in Germany all nouns are capitalized... ruth is commonly referred to as The Mother of Jazz Poetry. You could also call her one of the original beatniks. She's a Holocaust survivor. She's an artist and a beautiful soul. She considers herself a poet. She and Jack Kerouac use to sit up all night and write haikus, and on one occasion - Mr. Kerouac told her she was a better poet than he. ruth responded to this by telling Jack that she is the poet after all and he's the novelist. I created this video in my Broadcast Journalism class in 2003. I decided to document a Beatitudes event where 40 different beat poets performed in a two block radius in San Francisco. Ruth's poetry really spoke to me. A few days later, I tracked down her phone number and called to ask if she would be open to a sit-down interview. It seemed like it was meant to be (ruth might use the word synchronicity) because her big trip to receive an award in Germany had been cancelled at the last minute and a few days later, I found myself welcomed into ruth and Paul's beautiful home. I chose to call the video Make Waves because I think that's something ruth has done her entire life, perhaps we all do. The closing song includes ruth's poem entitled Make Waves. The first time she played this song for me, she explained that a friend took her to a farm that had just been marked by crop circles. ruth wrote Make Waves while sitting in the middle of a fresh crop circle. |
| Produced
by: Abby Spyker Filmed, Photographed by: Abby Spyker Edited in Final Cut Pro by: Abby Spyker This video was a school project & includes some archival images (public domain & copyrighted) Created in: 2003 relevant links: e-poet - the Book of Voices: ruth weiss Gualala Arts: ruth weiss and jazz trio |
