Tommy Becker is “A poet trapped in a camcorder [who] continues to feed video, music and poems into his never-ending saga, ‘TAPE NUMBER ONE’. Often Becker’s single channel works are translated to live performance.” Discovering new-to-me videopoets of such originality is what makes all the work of publishing Moving Poems worthwhile. Here’s the Vimeo description:

Song for Awe & Dread is a contemporary take on the vanitas paintings of the 17th century and an investigation into the emotional duality of our existence. It is AWEsome to be human and to be alive, but the evolution of human intelligence has also burdened our species with a self-awareness of life’s impermanence. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called these two uniquely human emotions, awe and dread. Through its symbolic meditation on mortality, this work attempts to find meaning between the fleeting flavors of bubblegum and cultural programming that entrenches us in our denial of death.

Music & Text & Video: written, recorded, performed and edited by Tommy Becker ©2015
instructional poetry read by – Don Johnson
skeleton characters performed by – Billy Mark
backing vocals – Rosie Harald
public domain footage – collected from the Prelinger Archives.

A huge THANK YOU!!! to all my students for their enthusiastic participation.
soundcloud.com/tapenumberone/song-for-awe-dread