Inspiration, circa 1980

When I was kid, I loved going to the movies. General Cinema was the big theater in town, and one of my favorite moments was after the previews and before the movie started when the General Cinema clouds would appear with this soaring music — music that made my skin tingle and my heart beat faster and my imagination spin with possibilities.

I knew at a very young age that I wanted — that I needed — to create, and this “thing” inside me stirred whenever the clouds appeared and the music played, almost as if the two were a trigger to remind a dormant piece of my soul what it was being called to do.

I was thinking about the clouds and the music the other day, struggling to describe them and wondering if I could somehow find them online. I googled “general cinema clouds,” and the first item to show up was a YouTube video of what’s called “the policy trailer” (I never knew it had a name). I’m embedding it below. About 32 seconds in you’ll see my clouds and hear my music, and if you listen closely, you might hear my soul singing, too.