Middelburg Magic

role: Director; Editor

date: June 2024

What is magic? This was always the question.
This video was an attempt at capturing the fantastical absurdity of my 3 years in a small town in rural Holland. Filmed only a few weeks before I graduated, I felt a need to add my witness to what happened.

The short film both uses real scenes and locations from my daily life in Middelburg, NL as well as metaphor for the general role of writer, observer, and poet.

The people in this video are my real friends, most of whom I lived with for some period of time.

I spent lots of time trying to understand how the environment of a small, obscure town, 700 students, and a common thread of internationalism created the magic I was experiencing. I came to realize the magic was not in the environment, but in each individual person.

Our perception, vision, feeling… these are what create the potential for magic. A blade of grass is always a blade of grass– it is the person experiencing the beautiful miracle of its existence, or the wonderful touch of its coolness, and then expressing this, that creates magic.

I was lucky to be surrounded by people who are magical– and finally I’ve come to understand a little more about magicians, and wizards, and witches… artists, and lovers, and poets, and builders, through them.

I love you my friends!