On the night of August 19, 2026, the water came fast.

After the retention pond wall behind our neighborhood gave way, water began rushing toward our house. What followed was a long night of trying to protect what we could—moving things upstairs, watching the water continue to rise, and documenting what was happening around us. By the next day, the water had left a 21-inch line across our basement.

In the days since, much of our time has been consumed by the physical reality of a flood: packing, moving, cleaning, documenting losses, tearing out damaged materials, and trying to figure out what comes next. My body is tired and everything hurts, but eventually I needed to stop working on the destruction for a little while and make something from it.

The Water Came Fast

I created The Water Came Fast as a way of processing and sharing those first hours.

I wrote the song using Suno, drawing directly from what happened that night—the wall giving way, the water rushing toward the house, working through the night to save what we could, and eventually discovering just how high the water had risen.

I then gathered video filmed by me, Karl, and Alex and arranged the clips chronologically in CapCut. The resulting montage documents the first two days of the flood, beginning around 9 p.m. on August 19 and continuing through August 20 as we watched the water rise and began confronting what it had left behind.

The Water Came Fast
Bellefontaine, Ohio
August 19–21, 2026

🎥 Carol & Karl Record, Specialist Smith

Making Something From What Happened

Creating has always been one of the ways I process what happens to me. Photography, video, music, writing, design, dance—they give me somewhere to put experiences that are difficult to hold in their original form.

I’m grateful God guided me toward art, because art continues to nourish my spirit when my body and mind are exhausted. It gives me a way to take fear, pain, anger, grief, and exhaustion and transmute them into something meaningful.

This video doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t rebuild the basement or replace what was lost. But it allows me to take possession of the story—to document what we experienced and transform a moment of destruction into an act of creation.

My body may be weary, but my spirit rises every time I create.