Recently my daughter and I took a trip to the small, somewhat odd Namibian coastal town of Lüderitz. I say it’s odd because we arrived on a Saturday afternoon, after driving a long, winding road which seemed unable to keep the sand dunes at bay – at several points the dunes were slowly making their way across the paved two-lane road. But when we got there it appeared the town was completely deserted. It’s the windiest place I’ve ever been in my life, a desert coastal town on a bare rocky outcropping. All the stores were closed for the weekend. So we made our way to the beach and took a long drive around the completely deserted peninsula to the southeast – a 65 km dirt road with occasional side forays to view one or another interesting rock formation or cave – with most of the signs in German. The light had a yellow tinge to it and everything seemed kind of surreal – giant waves crashing on the rocks, a small island with penguins, another small island – really, just a rock – with seals. My daughter was looking at shells that had washed up and was startled by a jackal standing only a few feet away, on a rock roughly at eye level. It appeared never to have seen people, sniffing her footprints and jumping back every time she made eye contact.
Anyway, it’s odd experiences like this that are especially difficult to capture the right mood with the right soundtrack. I made two versions of a video trying to capture the scenery and the mood – the first one uses a piano soundtrack licensed from FriendlyMusic.com, and the second is a guitar piece my daughter found on YouTube when she objected to the piano music. I’m not sure either piece gets it right, but they’re both different, with pretty much the same visuals.
