planet dust
Planet Dust is a self-portrait project created in Virginia Commonwealth University's Time Studio course during Lauryn's freshman year. This 2 minute and 18-second project is based on a poem called Planet Dust, that Lauryn wrote in her senior year at Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts & Technology. The poem was published in South Georgia University's fledge, a journal of outstanding high school writing.
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In Planet Dust, Lauryn wanted to focus on what would happen to the physical body rather than her spirit after death. She combines several themes of spirituality, astronomy, and the creation of new life. Lauryn believes that her body, just like Earth, will one day cease to exist and that the planet will fade away into dust that floats throughout the uncharted realms of space. She says that the dust will create new life on new planets, as the same dust of past lives, planets, and stars have created all life on Earth. Lauryn feels like her skin, the dust on the windowsills, and the ground of the Earth have deeper stories beneath their surfaces. She wishes that she could speak to the dead to understand the stories of where the dust came from and the lives that flourished from it.
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In the fall semester, Lauryn traveled around Richmond and Chesterfield to capture shots of different landscapes and interiors of buildings to recreate these philosophical concepts and ideas rooted in her poetry. She put her videos together in Adobe After Effects to conclude the final piece.
Giddings, Lauryn. Planet Dust. 2021, video.
Planet Dust
I one day
Will be the dust on window seals
The very same dust that children blow away
And draw their fingers through the desert
Caked on the window like stained glass
My eyes
Are not wired
To see what that dust use to be
To hear the stories and tales
To witness another soul
Through a dead man’s eyes
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I know
That is not something
Or a gift usually one is to sought after
But the mystery
The intriguing questions
And answers they may have
Pecker at my soul
Like a woodpecker to its passions
I want
To see the dead
Not their bodies
But their spirits
To see them roam parallel planes
For fear to be a distant memory
To be healed wound
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I want to see
Them follow, look after
Their loved ones
Or if they dissolve into a mist
Of nothingness
Like a dried puddle on a summer day
To provide
Some sort of comfort, answers
To a vast unknown
Some at least
To an unknown they even
May not understand
​
Earth’s funeral
Will not be like the other billions
Of majestic balloons
Floating in a black ocean
When Earth cease to exist
It shall wade away like the dust
Spun into planets like wool
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Life will flourish on new planets
With the very same dust
That children blew off window seals
That made my hands
That made my eyes
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My eyes will become someone else’s
My feet will roam a foreign land
Bits and parts of me
Cells or something much smaller
Will live in theirs
In their bodies
In their movements
In their voices
Which are cries of a million souls
I am made up
Of thousands of deceased planets
Dust from another life
That once sauntered an unfamiliar land
Or glued to an alien windowsill
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And then
I will once return the dust
Back to where I got it
My soul along with others
Will scatter amongst the universe
To create something new
Beautiful
Or abhorrently dreadful
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Whatever it may be
I will live on
Somewhere
In an ocean of unknown
Stretching against the horizon
With nothing to hinder it
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So the dead has tales
And I would like to speak to them
To hear them
Beginning with the ones in my very skin
And the ones on the windowsill
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Of the lives they lived
Wars they’ve seen
Stars that scorched our skin
Or the soft umbrella of clouds
That saved us
