MUSIC SCORES I MADE: a tiger, kids & a hippo

I realized I've never shared movie music I've created!

The Tiger's Gift is a wonderful animated short film for which I had the honor of composing and recording the score. Josh Addessi and Jimi Bonogofsky, Digital Media Arts grads from Huntington University, created and animated it. They've since entered it into several shows and it seems to charm children's audiences! In fact, it won the Animated category in the 2012 Sundial Film Festival

(Quick story: I was under a deadline to complete The Tiger's Gift score. Deadlines and me hate each other. Nonetheless, my enemy Deadline always wins, and as it was approaching I ended up staying up literally all night on the final day. A 3-hour detour from composing came in the very unexpected visit of a nervous friend of ours named Joel who knocked on our door after midnight with a bleeding finger. He said he was trying to open a can. Upon inspection, I found that it was DEEP and I tried to stop the blood flow with peroxide, gauze, Neosporin, bandages, etc. to no avail. So I took him to the emergency room [he doesn't drive and was probably too frantic to do so, anyway] where I watched him hilariously and repetitively drill the staff about how this was going to affect his work with cleaning a fish pond the following day for a shut-in woman. Joel is an inquisitive man. They told him, 'Don't stick your hand in a pond.' He also asked the triage guy if he'd ever seen a cut like this, to which he replied, 'Only about three thousand times.' Joel turned out fine and I finished the score in the wee hours, and the two events shall always be linked in my memory.)

Two more films I provided music for are I Think I Might Be that Jimi worked on with my sister Colleen and Birds of a Feather, a stop motion short film that Colleen and her husband Cevin made (I particularly enjoy the way the theme turned out for the titles). Enjoy!

MINISTRY UPDATE | APR 2012

The Spring 2012 semester at WVU has come to a close. What a year it's been! So many glorious, passionate, beautiful, life-changing, mind-blowing, eternity-touching moments. I have stood in awe. Here is a little (grossly inadequate) UDPATE for those that pray for our Young Life College ministry, those who support with generous giving, and anyone interested in the goings-on of a gospel-centered mission in the heart of higher learning in the Appalachians of West Virginia.

(Click each picture to view it!)

EURO UPDATE Day 1: Edinburgh

We're off!

We are here settled at our first destination, The Hedges B&B in Edinburgh, Scotland! We didn't get much sleep at all on the plane Wed night, and then we spent an hour accidentally wandering around the Edinburgh University looking for The Hedges!

But a nice student pointed us in the right direction and after a bunch more walking, ascending 'Jacob's Ladder' (this ancient stair/path that led up to the New Parliament building--of which we accidentally walked through the open gates and heard a recording on loudspeakers saying, 'THIS...IS...SECURITY. YOUR PRESENCE HAS BEEN DETECTED AND SECURITY PERSONNEL ARE ON THEIR WAY TO YOUR LOCATION.' Haha!) and walking through the picturesque Calton Hill, we finally got to our place.

And the lovely hostess Heather had our room ready early! We HAD to catch up on sleep so we did that for about 3.5 hours midday Thu, then we got ready and walked about 15 minutes to the intersection of Princes Street and North Bridge at the apex of Old Town and New Town. We chose a charming little gastro-pub called The Mitre Bar (named for a 17th century ghost of a 'fugitive bishop' said to haunt there) in which to eat some fish, came back and slept, and now are about to eat our first full Scottish breakfast via Heather!

At the top of Jacob's Ladder! The Royal Mile behind us, leading to the Edinburgh Castle on the right.

An impressive structure at the entrance of Old Town from the North Bridge.

Looking down the Royal Mile to the east as it descends.

The Mitre Bar! I had fish and chips, Sarah had sea bass and a DELICIOUS apple pie with custard.

Where in the world is Cameron King?

Orlando!

If you wanna keep up with some of what's going on with me this week, here are some social media avenues at your disposal:

Read the official blog of the Young Life All-Staff Celebration: ylasc12.blogspot.com

See pictures and more on Facebook: facebook.com/ASC2012

Follow the official Twitter feed: twitter.com/asc2012

See what people are hashtagging on Twitter: #ylasc12

Follow my own Twitter feed: twitter.com/cameron_king

See you on Sunday, wintry West Virginia!

KIVA: loans for life

Hi friends! Just wanted to shoot out a quick few words on KIVA, another one of these amazing organizations that's cropped up in the last decade to help Americans and everyone with excess to administer justice to those with lack.

It's very simple: you make a loan in increments of $25 to any of KIVA's approved borrowers from around the world and BOOM! you've made a difference. KIVA takes care of the rest: they make sure there is a specific money goal for the borrower for a specific business need and keep them on a specific payback schedule.

I just made my fifth loan (I received a KIVA loan as a gift a few years ago, and every time the borrower pays it all back, I lend it again) to this lovely group running a restaurant in Uganda. I was drawn to them because the boss lady's name is Annet (my mom's name is Annette) and she's 54 years old (you guessed it--so is my mom).

If you feel inspired to get started on this amazing microloan adventure, click here or on the KIVA graphic above.

a very sufjan christmas

In case you haven't seen this, prepare to chuckle and feel warm and fuzzy inside. It's an animation set to Sufjan Steven's 'Put the Lights on the Tree.'

Also, if your Christmas music repertoire doesn't include the EPs from which this comes, check out my LISTENING tab to the right (or click here). Sufjan coincides sentimentality and tongue-in-cheek-ness quite satisfactorily. My favorite track is 'Once In Royal David's City' from volume II; always makes me choke up to think of that child growing up, dying, rising, ascending and returning to 'lead his children on to the place where he is gone.'

before our very eyes

I found a post saved in my drafts from about a year ago that I never finished! I will attempt to do so now...

Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804

I recently had an interesting conversation about philosophy with Addison Phillips, which is no surprise to anyone who knows him. I will attempt to summarize that which was, to me, the most fascinating moment of our discussion.

We were talking about one of the philosophers Addison has studied, Kant, who laid claim to synthetic epistemology. I had to ask Addison what epistemology was, so please, know that there's no judging going on from this end if you're having trouble even pronouncing it, let alone knowing what it is; here's my dictionary widget's explanation:

epistemology |iˌpistəˈmäləjē| noun Philosophy the theory of knowledge, esp. with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

'The theory of knowledge.' To understand what it means to know something. For instance, when you walk through a door, what do you know about that experience? In the physical realm, it's a large, flat piece of wood that's been carved and assembled by a man or machine, affixed with metal hinges and knobs and a lock, maybe some glass, and it is inserted into a cutout at the front, back, or side of your house or any building. In the practical sense, you use it every time you want to go into or out of a place and, when locked, it prevents (or at least hinders) unwanted persons from entering the premises.

What you actually 'know' about using a door is more related to the second description in the above paragraph: what it's used for. For what is wood? What is metal? Glass? Wood comes from trees, yes, but what's a tree? Metal and glass come from the earth; what is the earth, really? If we use our five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) to experience the world, we entirely rely upon them. They communicate things to us like, 'That telephone poll is 10 feet away, walk around it,' or, 'Hold your hands to your ears as the firetruck passes to avoid hearing damage,' things that are necessary knowledge for survival.

The remarkable and most memorable part of our conversation had to do with something Kant suggested: the unreliability of our senses Interpreting and translating information. What are the true objects of these interpretations? How do we know an apple tree is an apple tree? It could really be some weird monster that knocks us down when we run at it too fast but gives us something good to eat when we reach our hands up to it. The point is this: since we utterly depend upon our senses to give us practical information about the world, we can't discover what is true reality via our senses. We know enough to survive, but we don't know what really may be before our very eyes.

Neo waking to reality.

It's hard to capture the sensation that came over us as we discussed this. It was simultaneously terrifying and thrilling. We were sitting on my porch, Addison on the swing, me in the rocker, and I looked around at the street, the houses, the hillside. I envisioned some horrifying world that I was unable to perceive but could sense at the edges. All these familiar objects, even the dear faces of loved ones, may not actually be as I've always thought them to be. It reminded me of Neo in The Matrix abruptly discovering the true nature of his surroundings upon taking Morpheus' famous red pill.

It made me feel very grateful that our good God is the One forming ultimate reality. Whatever real reality really is (haha) that He's created, however difficult it may be to swallow, there's a thrill in knowing that 'for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face' (1 Corinthians 13:12a).

MINISTRY UPDATE | NOV 2011

I've entirely failed at blogging the last two months! Mostly due to an awesome season of ministry, from which I've highlighted a few stories and things to pray for (if you're a praying person, please do so!) in this, CAM'S MINISTRY UPDATE for November!

This is written with donors to the ministry in mind, but obviously anyone can enjoy it and celebrate with me and Sarah! [Click each pic to read.]