Recently, the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate broadcast a piece on the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project and Robert Darden.
Click here to see it.
Mentioned in these four minutes and twenty five seconds are Darden’s relationship to gospel music, the BGMRP’s mission, and the fact that Darden may not see the project completed. Does this discourage me? Does this take the air out of A Life’s Work?
No and no. I would be disheartened if I was hoping to break a story and they scooped me. But I’m under no such illusions. All of the subjects in the film had varying degrees of press before I started filming them. If they hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have found them.
I welcome the publicity–it’s good for the BGMRP and A Life’s Work. (They don’t mention the film, but the reporter does say “a life’s work.”) This news item is valuable, but ultimately its goals (quick, sound-bitey information) and ALW’s goals (a meditation on what it means to devote your life to something bigger than yourself) are very different.
I am at peace with you, NBC DFW.