REFERENCES:
- decoding iamamiwhoami – the beginnings
- A Closer Look at iamamiwhoami’s b Video
- iamamiwhoami’s o video
- u-1
- u-2
- n from Nature/Natural
- T – back in the kingdom we were Kings and Queens
- And this is Y all that’s left is Hope
- Iamamiwhoami – Sources of Inspiration
- Identity in iamamiwhoami
- An Archetypal and Mythological Approach to iamamiwhoami
- iamamiwhoami official youtube channel
Hey, speaking of archetypes and myths, huh?
So finally, we’ve been offered a real confirmation that this entire iamamiwhoami thing is real and has as final result, an artistic product.
iamamiwhoami’s first song and video. Watch it again and then follow me as I have tried to break it into pieces and explain my point of view:
Lyrics:
There it was, a land of decay
We should pack our things and run away
Rest in the quicksand
Shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand
Sink slowly now, take flight
Let the silence take us at daylight
Take a deep breath as we go, as we go
Wanting higher
Wanting higher up
Wanting higher
‘Til the moon forces us to climb back down
I’d rather stay, I’d rather let us drown
Wanting higher
Wanting higher up
Wanting higher
What a harsh, unpleasant hello
The kind of love I’ve learned to live with although
I will never shake what’s there behind
Your songs are still playing in my mind
All that white only turns to blue
Look after me and I’ll look after you
Take a deep breath as we go, as we go
It’s quite a long road, if you’re not patient, come back another day.
First and foremost, stop saying it’s not the same campaign and it’s not the same girl. They are. Don’t fool yourself. There are symbols you encounter in all videos, including the 7th. As for the relation to the Mandragora Officinarum – which seems to have totally disappeared in the 7th, huh? – I told you guys you should look at things from a symbolical perspective. It’s the birth of an artistic product. Everything that is born into this world comes out with a shriek. Even music. It’s the artist’s effort in the act of creation.
Let’s begin. Action seems to take place into our old cabin in the forest. Hints: wooden environment – wooden walls, furniture, same color, windows offering a view towards trees, forest.
There are four characters:
1. MO
2. Three men:
After watching the videos and working frame by frame, I have come to a conclusion: to me, there are two possibilities:
Scenario #1: A mental hospice therapy room. Case in which we’re dealing with some sort of rehab facility. Again, METAPHORICALLY speaking.
1 – Mandragora is the pill. Music is the medicine. We have a doctor (at the table) and two sick men having therapy applied. Mandragora receives her patients and starts her therapy session (turns the sandals upside down) and then calms them with her music (and, by mistake, the doctor takes it too lol)
2 – Mandra is the patient, the man at the table is the therapist, the other two are male nurses. Hint: the nurse shoes and pants. Mandra is, of course, mentally disturbed. However, mentally disturbed people are very creative and sometimes, weird creativity is understood wrong, as mental deviation. Her crazy person force jacket is the plastic wrapping.
Scenario #2: A giving birth room. Hints: cradle, cradle toys, rocking chairs.
Mandragora is – now – wearing what seems to be a fake skin. Think of a serpent losing its skin. At the beginning of the video we can see this fake skin appearing to be breaking and Mandra trying to remove it. She kinda succeeds in the pointer nail area, as she manages to scratch on the piano. To me, she is what it is supposed to be born or RE-BORN. The cradle is still empty, so she is still in the process.
LE: After having read Alraune by Hans Heinz Ewers, I have actually understood that the room in B is the room in which Alma Raune, Alraune’s mother, has been kept captive by Brinken, Frank Braun and Manasse (the three men portrayed in B in my opinion) so that they can use her for Brinken’s experiment. That is to be artificially inseminated with the semen of a hanged man and to give birth to Alraune (MO). Having this in mind, the woman in B is is The Mother. Alma Raune, a prostitute. And she’s waiting to give birth.
The video is constructed in a cyclical way. We are being introduced inside the story by a goat’s bleat (okok, cat) and we’re take out of it by the same bleat. Also, we are being given a specific time to witness (the sandals).
LE: The sandals also imply the time the men have to wait until Alraune is born. Nine months.
Re-occurring motifs:
6
6 buttons:
6 kitties, which may actually be just one, because in the last images, we’re being presented more, however, the cradle toy moves naturally, so it could just be a deja-vu effect. Whoa, Matrix kitty!
mirror
Speaking of cradles, take a look at the cradle toy. There must be something there. It looks like some letters or signs to me.
LE: The signs above the cradle in B are letters in elder futhark, an old runic alphabet.
The X means ‘gift’, The O means ‘the God Ing’, the P (right after X, clockwise) means ‘joy’ and the last letter (close to C or G -as I see it, after O, clockwise) means ‘luck’. Translation: the newborn (god ing) receives the gifts of joy and luck (whatever, something like that, you get the idea)
I could never make the exact of these signs. For example, my P could also be an ‘n’ (second row, second sign), which means ‘need’. Translation of the signs would be ‘god ing needs the gift of luck’. That sign could also resemble and ‘r’ (first row, fifth sign) which means ‘riding’. Translation: god ing rides the gift of luck.
‘Ing (Yngvi) is a name of the god Freyr, perhaps intended as Freyr’s true name while Frey ‘Lord’ is his common title. In the Ynglinga saga and in Gesta Danorum, Frey is euhemerized as a king of Sweden’ (wiki)
King of Sweden needs (receives?) the gift of luck. May the king receive the gift of luck.
Here are print screens to support everything I’ve said up to now and to help you see things you haven’t noticed:
Balsa wood tied with hair.
LE: We were given the meaning of the balsa wood tied with hair right after the infamous MTV James package. Also, after having read Hans Heinz Ewers’ Alraune, I have discovered the hair strands have meanings which are way closer to the concept iamami has been built on.
Kitty in cradle. I am telling you, the kitty is the baby and she’s just learning to ‘talk’ her own language. For now, she’s just bleating, haha!
Wall fan. I couldn’t make too much of this, apart from it being of Chinese origin, thus maybe a hint of the I Ching theory. Ooooor… we could think of fan as an admirer, DISCIPLE (tag which is often encountered in the first videos).
Other Mandra face and teeth views
PS: Jonna Lee + bandmembers + director of iamamiwhoami videos = LOVE
Here’s something interesting. And something else. 1:07 and on
Oh, and this picture from her Twitter. It must have been like hell, aye? Also thiiiiis…
1:07 and on:
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNER!!!
Opinions to support Jonna Lee or video analysis:
The men have pulled her up out of the ground using the dogs and captured her and are using her like a hallucinogenic drug. The timer is how long they can listen to her song without dying. She’s being made to perform for an audience. This bears a similarity with the mandrake root, I’m sure you all know about the mandragora screaming myth so I won’t go into that, this video refers to the mandragora’s hallucinogenic properties. The link is to the child beauty pagaent because it’s the same thing, little girls being made to perform for an audience.
- Best explanation I’ve heard today