If you haven’t seen “The Barking Horse,” a video poem by Patrick Sheridan and Christine McQuillen, you’re in for a treat. “People immediately engage with the video,” says Sheridan, whose poem of the same name forms the video’s text. “The response it’s gotten still surprises me. Strangers have called me, sometimes in tears, and told me their personal stories of estrangement from their families, of emotional and physical abuse, and of reconciliation.”

“The Barking Horse” is just under three minutes, but its history goes back twenty-five years. “It’s about the man I was long ago,” says Sheridan. “It’s brutally honest. It’s about me realizing that my problems were self-inflicted. In that way, it’s confessional.” The video seems funny at first (“I had a dog / His name was Horse”) but soon the mood darkens. We wonder why the main character, a man in his middle years, can’t seem to call things by their true names.

“When I was younger, I had trouble being honest. I could be charming and funny – and manipulative.” The poem tells us: “So this woman, this woman I love
/ Said, ‘Such foolish things you say and do.’ / It’s not foolish for the ones you love,
/ Said I.” The man seems to be telling the woman, played by Christine McQuillen, that dishonesty is the price of love. She looks up at him, her face troubled – and then he’s alone (“In my fit, I said some things
/ Then some things I should not have said.
/ And did not say the things I should have said.”)

We see this pattern unfold as the video progresses and the man’s inability to be honest causes pain to those around him:

 

So I got a cat I named her Mouse

She ate the fish I called Bird

The neighbors, too, were confused

I called them friends.

They used a different word.

 

“I had the poem for years. I always wanted to do something with it.” But to do this Sheridan says he had to get out of his own way and let things happen naturally. “I sent it to (actress/director/producer) Christine (McQuillen), and she wanted to work with it.” McQuillen and Sheridan were the entire crew for the video (“that was a challenge!”) and some unexpected things happened. “We were filming on a set of train tracks when a person in the neighborhood called 911. They thought someone was trying to commit suicide on the tracks.” When the paramedics arrived, they ended up in the middle of the shoot. Sheridan gave them a photo of McQuillen against the Rocky Mountains, a picture they agreed was beautiful.

Another event was the discovery of an image of a white horse after an exhausting day of filming. “We had no idea the horse was on film. We’d spent the whole day trying to get the right shot, but this one showed up by accident.” Sheridan and McQuillen filmed the video in a series of still images, with the camera stationary instead of following the action. Sheridan, who plays the man in the film, is the only character who looks at the camera, speaking directly to the viewer.

McQuillen and Sheridan filmed in and around Denver, Colorado. Many scenes occur on a front porch where various items – a typewriter, books, a bird cage, terrarium, candles, a bottle of Bailey’s and two glasses of wine – surround the couple as they navigate their relationship. “The front porch is from a historic home in Denver,” Sheridan said. “The things on the porch are significant – especially the two glasses of wine and the shot glass.” The two glasses symbolize the couple; the shot glass is the image of drinking alone. “Alcohol is part of the problem here, and the things on the porch show how stuff – things – get in the way of relationships.” The dog, too, makes his appearance on the porch, and then disappears.

The story works as “a narrative even though it’s based on a poem. I didn’t want the visuals to exactly match the poem. I wanted the video to tell a visual story, one that viewers could understand even without the narrative.” People don’t necessarily know it’s based on a poem, and that knowledge isn’t important to understanding and enjoying the video.

Although the video looks like the result of careful crafting, Sheridan put the final edits together “at 2:00 in the morning, with my head under a blanket, trying not to wake up my kids.” Trying to finish the video in order to enter it in Denver’s Festivus Film Festival, he soon found out that the festival was cancelled because of a snowstorm. Since then, the video has screened at other festivals, but found its most important venue as a much-shared file on the internet. “People have shared it so many times I’ve lost track of where it is. I’ve pulled it from festivals for now, since there’s so much on-line viewing going on, but festivals still call, wanting to screen it.” The video even inspired two women to create a poetry film festival, Denver’s Spoken Word Film Festival.

“I had no idea “The Barking Horse” would touch so many people. That’s the best reward I could have imagined.” Sheridan has more videos in mind, and he’s writing poetry again. “I have an idea to write some mini love stories.” He’s a little worried: “how do I top ‘The Barking Horse?’” Whatever creative endeavor Sheridan tries next, I’m sure it will be memorable.

 

Watch The Barking Horse:

The Barking Horse from Patrick Sheridan on Vimeo.

The Barking Horse

I had a dog
His name was Horse
He’d come when I call.
Sometimes fetch.
Sometimes roll over, play dead
Sometimes shake your hand.
Sometimes.
He’d have been a doggier dog, I know
had he a doggier dog name.
One day he ran away
And while away
I’d hear the song
Of my missing dog
So out I went, calling his name
my lost friend the barking Horse
So this woman, this woman I love
Said, “Such foolish things you say and do.”
It’s not foolish for the ones you love,
Said I
But that day, or seems
he went away, away for good.
So I got a cat I named her Mouse
She ate the fish I called Bird
The neighbors, too, were confused
I called them friends.
They used a different word.
One day I said to the this woman,
this woman I love.
If I had a white horse
I’d call him Brown Cow
Just so I could say,
“How now horse Brown Cow?”
So this woman, this woman I love
Said: “If you don’t know the names of things
How can you mean most anything?”
In my fit, I said some things
Then some things I should not have said.
And did not say the things I should have said.
And so she went away, or so it seems,
like my dog, the barking Horse
Of all the things left to say
I have only one wish I wish to say
I’m sorry in the way words do not convey
And I’d say all those things that I’ve saved up
If only this woman, this woman I love
Would find her way back to me
And help me find my barking Horse
So I could call this house a home.
– Patrick Sheridan

 
 
Photo: Different Names for the Same Thing by Thomas Hawk