Hey,

The full film component of Juma was released this week. 45 minutes of yours truly walking around an empty Nova Scotian landscape last November. It was very cold. Especially the part where I dive into the ocean.

I will say, it was not easy or enjoyable to get in front of a camera. I’ve been working behind them most of my adult life, and that’s where I feel comfortable: image-making, not image-being.

But, I find myself a musician in the twenty-first century, a hundred years after the advent of recorded music, public relations, and celebrity. Image is something I am forced to navigate in order to share the music that I make, if I want it to be heard.

When most people talk about music, they don’t actually talk about the music. They talk about persona, myth, identity. Someone once showed me a Kanye interview where he says that he spends 20% of his time making music and 80% marketing it.

This film was a misguided effort to market an unmarketable album, which I sabotaged by turning it into slow boring art. I couldn’t help it. I love making art. Even better if it’s slow.

All that to say, if you end up watching the film, try not to think about what I ate for breakfast (oatmeal), what kind of cigarettes I smoke (bad Canadian ones), or what size shoes I’m wearing (14 triple-wide). None of that matters. I am already a very different person from the one you see in the video. Just listen to the songs.

IV

Isaac Vallentin

Juma, the movie