Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Wild

These days, at the tender age of twenty-three,
I get extremely bored with myself.
Where has that color
gone off to?

That purple dot on the surface of my brain
which dripped into my soul
feeling God in the wild,
the wild which even it I have wondered,
"Where has that color
gone off to?"

A year passes and I feel the wild
even less than the year before.

Monday, December 19, 2011

I WANNA FEEL AT HOME

I WANNA FEEL AT HOME from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

Footage solely from our honeymoon.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Unplanned Holiday

Be sure to watch in HD... which I think you have to watch it on Vimeo in order to do that.

Unplanned Holiday from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

Here lies a music video - made by Will Rucker - for the band Colorfeels.

We had a lot of fun shooting this here video. We were all feeling the Christmas spirit and getting into the grooves of Colorfeels' vibes.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Create

Create from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

A night off Colorado Avenue. Pumpkin bread, sewing, Goldeneye, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, front porch conversation, drawing, and piano.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

BE THERE: A Film About A Band Named Colorfeels

BE THERE: A Film About A Band Named Colorfeels from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of Colorfeels' debut album, Syzygy. Watch the band jump from studio to studio, talking out songs ideas, and developing the melodies right before your eyes.

Walker Wedding

Walker Wedding from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

This is a sample of the film I made for Liz and Corbin Walker. Married on June 25th, 2011.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Geyer Wedding

Geyer Wedding from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

This is a sample of the film I made for Lauren and Chris Geyer. Married on September 3rd, 2011.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

I Question and Read Myself

I keep reading myself.

Where is my care?
Where I am, I suppose.
Deep down in my heart
in part
and staring at the way
I move my wrist.


I keep staring at myself.
I'd like to move my wrist, unread
from an insecure mind
wrapped in language.

I question my love for you all.
I question my role as a husband.

I question
and read myself.

Home

I keep thinkin' about myself.
I want to look at my home.

God has a home for us
where the questions shut down
and we sprint around
like a child blazing
with blind faith.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Loving Bigger

May you push my insides out
to reflect the energy I have stifled in the past
but exists still in my heart.

You are my battery, Lord.
You suck up weakness
and spit out strength.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

BE THERE trailer

BE THERE trailer from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

This is a trailer for the documentary, entitled, "BE THERE: A Film About A Band Named Colorfeels". It is A 40 minute behind-the-scenes look at Colorfeels in the studio recording their debut record, "Syzygy". For a limited time offer, purchase "Syzygy", and get a DVD of the documentary for no additional cost. To purchase, go to http://www.colorfeels.com/

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Healthy

I want to raise images
born from a fiery mind
scribbling from midnight until 7 am
and no one tell me I'm unhealthy.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Going Out with Friends

Dance like a kook with arms slapping the space around you, look at yourself.
Say, "This is how I dance."

Sing in whatever weird concoctions your chords project, hear yourself.
Say, "This is how I sing."

---

You fail your voice
when your only choice

is living entwined
in the cage inside

your empty head
where only you tread.

---

Do not mull over your lack of mulling over.
You are by yourself.

Find whatever it is your friends cherish about you.
You are with them.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

New Has Come

Be sure to watch in HD by clicking on the "HD" button on the bottom right of the video box.


New Has Come from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

This is a video I played at my rehearsal dinner, the night before I married Andrea Wilkins on July 30th, 2011. It is a montage of childhood home videos mixed between the Wilkins and Rucker households. Music is Frakkur and Jonsi & Alex.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

I Cannot

Be sure to watch in HD by clicking on the "HD" button on the bottom right of the video box.


I Cannot from Will Rucker on Vimeo.

If I was what I would be,

Then I'd be what I am not.

Here I am where I must be

Where I would be, I cannot.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Growth

Spirit vexed.
In wake,
heart pumps.

Seats
greet cheeks
reach feet

blooming.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Back Deck Apocalypse



Yes I see.
Myself, I know.
I see myself.

On my deck
with whiskey and smoke
down my neck.

I'm writing about my fight
with myself.
The good fight.

The good fight that hurts.
The toils and troubles
and burns.

About the hard forgiveness
within a cold heart.

The fight is successful
because the fight exists.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Colorfeels Documentary

Hey guys,

As many of you know, I have been following this band, Colorfeels, since mid-September of 2010. I've gone to most of their concerts, most of their visits to the studio, and I've sat down with them all individually for interview sessions.

They are releasing their album, titled Syzygy, on May 10th. They made a Kickstarter account about a month ago and have raised over $8,000. Pretty awesome.

Here is a little demo reel I threw together of the documentary I'm putting out on May 10th, alongside their album. Make sure you watch it in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.









Friday, March 11, 2011

Austin Manuel & Heidi Feek


Austin & Heidi have been writing together lately. It couldn't make me any more excited. The two pull together some of the most mature songs I've heard in a while.







Make sure you watch the videos in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.



Ain't It Just Like A Woman



Monday, March 7, 2011

Help Colorfeels



For more information, click here.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Natalie Prass


Nashville Scene wrote an article on her:
"While her delicate alto evokes clear benchmarks of influence — see early Rilo Kiley, Feist, Karen Carpenter, etc. — Prass never seems weighed down by the artists she’s absorbed. Instead, she has developed a refreshing guitar-grounded musical vocabulary and a knack for infectious and entrancing tunes. Still, it’s a spirit of invitation and friendship that continues to be Prass’ most pronounced attribute."




Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.





Left & Right Side

Friday, March 4, 2011

Sam Quinn & Japan Ten



You may know Sam as half of "the everybodyfields". These days, he lives in Knoxville pursuing a solo career. Sam has a dry and strange sense of humor that typically plays off of very painful matters. His lyrics grab specific Knoxville scenery, observing the feelings that, for me, are rarely ever anything more than a sub-conscious feeling - I have no idea why the imagery along Meads quarry and North Central churn and burn in my chest. He probably doesn't either, but he sure has made some great songs out of them. When I listen to his music, I'm a little jealous because I would have loved to say for myself: "Still the salt, it finds my wounds".








Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.


Oceans



Fanboy



So Strong



Magazines



Hello



Gun



Mardi Gras



It Doesn't Matter



Suite: Motown



Help Me



I Can't Sleep



Late the Other Night

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Jacob Metcalf


Jacob Metcalf is a Dallas, Texas native. He played at a house show at my friend, Chelsea Culbreath's, house on June 16th, 2010. His music has a very calm, breezy vibe to it. He was a pleasant surprise.

Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.









Correspondence

mewithoutYou


mewithoutYou played at Exit/In on June 23rd, 2010.

mewithoutYou is...

Aaron Weiss (Lead Vocals)
Michael Weiss (Guitar)
Greg Jehanian (Bass Guitar)
Richard Mazzotta (Drums)





They are a Philadelphia-based experimental rock band. MewithoutYou's music is generally dominated by spoken-word vocals and free-ranging drums, bass, and guitar. On their third album, Brother, Sister, the band incorporated more varied instrumentation including percussion instruments, accordion, and harp. Aaron Weiss writes lyrics about issues such as unity or division in the church, suicide, money, war and love. They tour in a 42 foot 1976 MC8 Charter bus (that used to read "Altus Bulldogs" before the band painted over it in July 2009) that runs on vegetable oil.


Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.

A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains



January 1979



In A Sweater Poorly Knit



Timothy Hay



Messes of Men



The Sun and the Moon



C-Minor



Son of A Widow



Four Letter Word



The Fox, The Crow, & The Cookie



Tie Me Up! Untie Me!



The Beetle King On the Coconut Estate

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Ode To Mom (Beauties, Seasonally)

On February 24th, 1988, she told me I was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. She is hurting and tired, but she's drop-dead gorgeous - the way a girl is unaware of some tuft of hair that kicks off the top of her ear, making men go crazy.

You plastered my face with anointing oil and summoned the wind to blow gently on my window.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Peter Barbee


Peter is very sure of himself. He goes down avenues and takes his songs with him. His hands always crawl to the right fret, right chord - and it seems to make a lot of sense how he constructs his songs. I appreciate his ear for music.








Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.


Hear Me Out




Dark Design

Andrew Combs




Andrew Combs is a fervent Americana man. His lyrics are naked and extremely honest. He seems to be obsessed with Townes Van Zandt and Gram Parsons, maybe even Guy Clark, because... wow... I hear it all over his music.




Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.





Too Stoned To Cry

Colorfeels @ Exit/In


I've been following Colorfeels around since mid-September of last year. I'm making a rock-doc about the process of recording their full-length album due late spring. I've gone back and forth between studios, whether it's Forge Seat or Ocean Way or Creative Workshop, and I've followed them to Exit/In and 12th & Porter and The Basement. If there's one thing I could say about these guys, it's that they are obsessed. They are obsessed with music and they are obsessed with all of the ideas that are pouring out of each one of them.

Make sure you watch the video in HD by clicking on the bottom right of the video.




Keepin' Me Alive

4am


















Tear Off Your Filth

Not really sure what you are

in doing life.


How much am I willing to give
in making myself naked.

I am nothing without nudity -
The world made my skin.
God made my Heart.

I want to rip off my skin
and throw my heart on the ground
and I ask you,
God! Please, rescue me from bondage.

Boring people get bored.

I want a brain filled with images
of broken people coming to your seat
and throwing flowers in the air
and screaming the Gospel with mouths
throwing up flies that resemble sin and filth
and God takes all of the flies and puts them in a cup
and burns and melts the cup in His hand.

People will scream God's truth
with cynicism left behind.

Dear Lord,
I love You.

So much.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Upsetting Genesis


A mare is a fully mature female horse,
perhaps the reason nightmares have enough horsepower
to tear down the start to days.

The blanket covers my bed,
my weakness in between.

Sunset at 11pm

I am waiting for a beard to get longer,
trees to wither.

The next blaze of fiery orange and yellow
will happen tomorrow night.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Photography: Best Of

Here are my favorite photos I've taken in the past year.





















Sunday, January 23, 2011

Quench

I eat your flesh
drink your blood
and I'll do it again tomorrow
because you give it to me freely
graciously
blessed
adorned


that I may be forgiven
when I kill other people.
You're always here
for me to eat
drink
read
befriend
love
wholeheartedly

through fixing my voice
with your flavor
as yeast
and wine.

I will kill more today
but I will eat your flesh again
drink your blood again
and stain your eternal robe.

Given Thoughts Giving Thoughts

I love it when Huck sneezes,,
U.P.S. drops Sam Quinn's new vinyl on my doorstep,
I anticipate a P.T. Anderson movie too much,
I drink coffee while I check my Email in the mornings,
Tom Delonge sings "I think I like today",

I love it when I make films that
say everything in my head -
to document what hurts my heart,
to help my heart.

I want the kind of body language
that helps other people's body language.

The Fight

It's easy to be heavy,
hard to be light.

It takes a look
at radiant truth

to not swallow the pills
with the whiskey.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Culture

I've seen people running away...

...from wives and the closets clad with monkey suits, backing away from the children reciting Bible verses. They are updating knowledge based on Pitchfork writers with no hearts for something that fits somewhere. A heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, understanding the trans-Atlantic society. Magazines with nude girls kissing other nude women, just to cause controversy so that it will indeed get published, a scurrying frenzy of these people flipping through pages.

I've identified with them. But I hate it.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Living in the Spirit

"The people around me seem to have heads on straight."

Is this a familiar thought to you?

Let me assure you, these boys and girls around you that seem to have a head on straight, are probably living in the flesh.

My life up until recently, I've spent being uncomfortable with the Spirit, but I would like to take this year, 2011, to begin a learning process - to be open to the Spirit. Do not live in your circumstances. Live in the Spirit. Have a soul but do not live in it. Your soul is made up of three things: your will, your mind, and your emotion. These three things are extremely powerful entities. When you went and saw Passion of the Christ, did you cry? I did. I'm not sure if my soul was crying or if my Spirit was crying. All I know is that my tears were shock-tears. I saw Jim Caviezel being beaten to death and - because I am faint of heart - I cried. When you read Chuck Palahniuk, you may experience his writing the same way I experienced Survivor and Fight Club, it makes you want to barf. It is great writing, but it's all shock-value. He is manipulating your emotions - the same way everything else worldly does - to feel something that might be there, but your flesh is relating to it in a way your Spirit does not. All Palahniuk does is make you feel like crap.

Would you not agree that focusing on your sin causes more sin? I want to move forward. I want to shed old skin. If I look at God and cut me out of the picture, well then I'm not a part of the picture.

I didn't understand the difference between Spirit and soul until last night - a sermon preached at my 2nd home church, Grace Center, spoke wonders to my empty Christian life I have spent twenty-two years hating.

I can't help but understand the difference between Spirit and soul in the most concise simplicity: Spirit is Him and soul is man. If you live from the soul, you are driving your car. Sit in the back seat and let God set fire under you.

You are thinking too hard - and might I add, way too hard - about experiencing the Holy Spirit that you never ever experience it.

How do you let the alabaster jar fall and break and the perfume pour out? In other words, how do you and I stop trying to let God's Spirit move in us and through us, rather than just letting it move in us and through us? Well, to be honest, I don't know the answer to that question, but this passage in Romans dampers a lot of questions I have.

________________________________

Romans 7:14-25

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[b] a slave to the law of sin.

________________________________


The best way to mature in the Spirit is just to wait. But that is the hardest thing to do, because - What are you to do but do nothing?

Just pray. And let God unfold you and do for you what you cannot do.

Oh. And another thing. Don't strive toward God. It never works because you're restless. Just walk in Him. Why kill yourself trying to attain His Spirit when it's already in you? I am all for being desperate for the Spirit and I will be desperate for the Spirit for as long as I live. But I also don't want to live life trying to jump from one "camp high" to the next. Let's live life with a calm heart rate.

Mark Allen won the Ironman Triathlon 6 years in a row. How did he do it? He used a heart rate monitor to keep his heart rate below 155 beats per minute - a heart rate most runners would have after an 8:15 mile. But Mark trained his heart to beat less than 155 beats per minute for 5:30 miles - 26 of them. He is breathing normally, blood pumping normally, and not having immediately exerted himself, sprinting the last leg of the triathlon. He has swam 2.5 miles. He has biked 112 miles. And now ending with 26.2 miles.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Something I'll Never See

I don't want to see what's here.
I want to be a man who sees something
invisible
something other people are seeing
but cannot tell you whether it's blue or small
or has crooked teeth or a black heart
or if it speaks cold words.

I would like to see you.
but I want to have faith in something
I'll never see.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Bruise

I start out each semester
just as ambitious as the next.

I sign up for a Fiction Writing course.
I think, "I'm gonna read some Steinbeck
I didn't know was there
or perhaps write
in the style of McCarthy
on accident."
But I become lazy too early on
and my emotions always deteriorate my energy.

Then again,
none of my art would have its direction
without a bruised mind.
God is watching over me.