Desert Island Top Four Title Sequences (and assorted YouTube tangents) by Jibade-Khalil Huffman

Huffman‘s artwork is currently on view in the exhibition “Double-Jointed” Cameron Crawford and Jibade-Khalil Huffman curated by Megha Ralapti at Scaramouche Gallery, New York. (May 20 – July 8, 2012)

When the brilliant artist/curator Steffani Jemison asked me to be a part of the Future Plan and Program project, I jumped at the chance to make a book of poems incorporating the visual and written. Moreover, given my interest in film and in messing with standard systems (i.e. karaoke, movie subtitles) of text, the film title sequence, seemed like the best match for the short poems, concerned as they were or are, with beginnings, that I had in mind.

As research I took to YouTube to watch the classics, flops, and underrated gems of the form. What follows are some notes on process, starts and finishes, procrastination, odd jobs, and other roundabout ways of making poetry.

“Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”

People always say certain title sequences or movie trailers are like “a movie.” Or they say the new Killer Mike video is “like a movie.” But then this one really is. If you wanted to extend the metaphor (the desert island metaphor I mean), you could also say you only really need to pack Saul Bass for the trip, as anyone who has seen a movie in the last 60 years knows he basically destroys it every time. Though it probably would be better if you had some sort of radio too, if you, after all, had the feeling you were going to crash land on a desert island.