Well, I thought I would try my hand at an artistic discussion. All my training and experience is science, so for all the artists reading this, please remember. I have an objective here, something just for my own benefit. On the topic of culture, all I can discuss with actual knowledge is American culture. One example of a standard American day is to get up early, work hard all day, finish supper, check the news just to be sure not to miss something important, get the house and the kids all straightened out for tomorrow, then sit down for a few moments at the television and have some time of entertainment. I’m sure there’s a wide range of what people will choose to watch, but I’m a fan of presentations that are related to reality and kind and fun. All the dark, dystopic, movements and interferences by principalities… none of that really interests me. I think it is rare and so nice to stumble across a movie detailing human beings being human. I saw the movie series The King’s Affection, and it has these qualities and one big benefit… it has a significant additional emphasis on being filmed to be beautiful. I don’t see that combination very often anymore. The objective I have here is to make these points, and perhaps more people would watch this movie, and I hope perhaps the film creators will notice this and create more productions with these qualities. I feel like I’m (once again) in the Voice Crying in the Wilderness department, waving my hands, jumping up and down, and saying, “Hey, look at this!”
At first, when I finished watching the series, I thought to myself, “Gosh, that was nice, what fun.” It is my experience that watching a movie over again is not that much for me, I remember what happened and I know what is going to happen, not really entertaining. But it was a pleasant movie and I kinda’ wanted to recapture watching it. I thought, “The movie treated the little Temple wind chime in a very nice manner.” “I could get one of those chimes, put it on my house, and when the wind was flowing, it would call out and remind me of that movie.” Not a big deal of a plan, I thought. Easy to do. To my surprise, as I wandered around on the internet, I could not find any available selections of what I decided to name as: The dangling fish brass bell Korean Temple wind chime. There seemed to me that there was nothing available that seemed to be artwork and functional and beautiful. I felt that was a little weird.
We all know now that powder metal laser 3D printing is available everywhere. I guess there’s no reason this wind chime could not be printed using powder brass as the substrate. The quality of the detail that can be created with laser powder metal 3D printing is becoming quite good and the item, once 3D printed, could be given polishing with cloth wheel and jeweler’s wax to bring it up to a high polish.
I thought the most basic version of this chime would be the bell, the chain, and the dangling fish. This has the advantage of simplicity and the beauty inherent in simplicity. I felt, however, that this wind chime is created to bring out recollection of the movie, so perhaps the chime could be given some features that reflect the movie.
The bell is a physical structure, so the features chosen to be incorporated into the bell need to be features of the movie where they could be rendered as three-dimensional items. I think the features should also tend to re-tell and support the “human beings living their human lives” storytelling of the movie.
I put together my collection of features. I’ll list them and add some supporting commentary for some of them.
Lotus blossoms. These can be added as a repeating set of blossoms going around the bottom of the bell flare. I think that treatment of the bottom edge of a bell with a repeating sequence of flower blossoms is seen a lot with many bells. The lotus blossom is given an important place in this movie, so lotus blossoms forming the base of the bell seem just right to me.
The eyes of the Princess King. This movie repeatedly emphasizes the eyes of the Princess King as she perceives and reacts to what is happening to her in the movie. I think there’s a male/female issue here. (What follows my opinion only, I could be wrong here). With males it seems to me they consider and recall events of the day and they recall, “This was not as nice as I wanted, for some reason.” Over time, sometimes over long time, they begin to realize, “Oh… that wasn’t nice because she wasn’t there.” For the female perspective of this concept, I can only guess, but I have the impression with females it is more a process where they say to themselves, “Oh gosh, what a bit of a surprise, this guy is important to me… surprise, surprise.” It seems to me; in the movie, the Princess King is filmed over the time of the movie as she does a very beautiful set of sequences where her eyes reflect her growing understanding of this process of what she is realizing about the Healer/Royal Tutor. I think she starts out a little bit clueless about this, and she evolves in the movie sequences to reflect her understanding of what is happening. I think the eyes of the Princess King need to be on the bell. With 3D printing an almost photorealistic rendering should be possible.
Vines. The vines begin the episodes each time, and they do obscure the hidden doorway. I would add a set of vines that go from the bottom of the bell up and around the eyes of the Princess King.
The movie is a story, and it’s storytelling, and words and documents are throughout the movie. I would add some words. This is a love story so we can let that be the topic of the phrases. Visually, with respect to time, I think the bell needs to be divided into quarters. The past, the present, the future, and the forever. Americans read from left to right, so if one were holding the bell with the Princess King’s eyes facing one, then the left quadrant gets the phrase: I did love you. The facing quadrant gets the phrase: I do love you. The right quadrant gets the phrase: I will always love you. The back quadrant gets the phrase: My soul sends love to you. I would let these letters be raised up, small, and run on the bell’s surface just above the lotus blossoms. This is after all the story of a hidden, secret love, so keep the letters small, sort of out of sight, and not too obvious, so that people who don’t know the story of the secret love, they wouldn’t even think to look to see if those thoughts were on the bell somewhere. Ssshhhhh…. it’s a secret.
The panorama. The back quadrant of the bell should have the panoramic view featured in the movie where she gazes wistfully at what she (as King) owns and manages, but what she wishes she could go down into and just be a human being living and experiencing without secrets all around. The forever phrase is appropriate here because she did send that thought and management out to her Kingdom and her people, and this would include also to the Healer/Royal Tutor (in addition to all that he was in the movie, he was also one of her subjects). This panoramic view should include the village, some fields, and some mountains.
Flower blossoms. I would fill a lot of the rest of the surface of the bell with renderings of the flower blossoms that the Healer/Royal Tutor brought into bloom in the former forgotten, haunted, alone, and empty space that he converted into the magic zone of beauty, happiness, flowers and a place where they could be together and (just for a moment) be escaped from all the secrets.
Hairpin. Somewhere, sort of hidden among the flower blossoms, I would add a rendering of the hairpin she asked for. This was important to her and represented sort of her first excursion toward moving herself into the world of normalcy that she was seeking.
The beating heart. As the chime exists in the wind currents, the fish will be swung around, and the striker will create the sounds of the bell. This is very much as a moving and beating heart inside a structure. It would be nice if this mechanism could be given construction features reflecting the heart and imagery of the heart. The striker of the bell is attached to a pendulum that runs from the inner top of the bell down almost to the bottom of the bell. I would let this pendulum be an ellipse. This ellipse would be a pure 24k gold band, reflecting a pure, precious, and beautiful heart at the center of this whole device. We know pure gold, while precious and beautiful, is soft and easily stretched, damaged, distorted by the natural forces that will act on it. I would add an inner band of tungsten running along with the golden band. This would be the strength and toughness element that must be present when hearts are involved. This tungsten would keep the golden band properly formed and undamaged. This heart would exist inside the bell, unknown to anyone who didn’t know about it. I think that’s OK, after all this is a story of a secret adventure of the heart.
The striker. I would create a rendering of the ring that was featured throughout the movie. I would let this be the item that strikes the bell to create the sounds of the bell as the bell says, “I am calling to you.”
The dangling fish. I would leave the dangling fish and its chain as being about what is seen for these dangling fish Korean Temple wind chimes. It seems to me this would connect this movie wind chime to where its roots come from, the Korean Temple wind chime.