iamamiwhoami; drops

6

Category : Entertainment, art

If you can’t avoid it, go through it.

Take the plunge.

plunge

drop = the act of falling; free fall, descent

Lyrics (approx.):

Give up, let down
Can’t believe what I found
(Be quiet, be silent, be words from your mouth)

Build up from ground
Wipe clean of your frowns
(Dance around, be fry, be right on crown)

When my fault (Come back)
Costs you all (Come back)
Sticks like glue
Obstructs my view

Speak up, adapt
Watch closely, keep track
(Tonight, we ride. Don’t use your time)

Thin line to walk
No time to stall
(We try to hide. Don’t waste our time)

Give up, let down
Can’t believe what I found (Found, found)
(Be quiet, be silent, be words from your mouth)

Build up from the ground
Wipe clean of your frowns (Frowns, frown)

One more fault
Costs you all

Until I’m through

(wikia)

So glad drops is a clear continuation of the story in sever! After watching drops, I can now understand what the big hairy clump might actually stand for. Her worst fear. Real life. Think about it: the door it comes through in sever is located on the same wall as the window – a clear sign of the outside. The arguing during the same video must have probably been an invitation in the real world, answered with a refusal. Reality hits you hard, right? Has a sneaky way of making you embrace it. Unless you’re in a special state of mind, of course.

Drops begins with MO dancing comfortably by herself. As music increases in intensity (such a B reminder!), she seems to enter deeper and deeper into her trance. Her moves are wider, more fluent, her swirls get ampler, she even seems to enjoy it. Alone, in her safe world.

‘Is it gone? Did I dance it away? ‘

She turns around and there it is… Still being… The disappointment on her face! It almost hurts not to be able to escape it. She takes a deep breath and a little bit of strength seems to be emerging in her bones. It looks like the Clump might have gotten a little bit dizzy from all her frenzied dance. Could it be possible that it’s dead? As she decides to check, she approaches it and the creature twitches one last time. Pretty much out.

‘Maybe if I go through it, it won’t see me anymore. It won’t follow.’

She steps on it carefully, her feet betraying reticence. One last look, she arranges her palms as for a planned descent and she begins her plunge. For that’s what it is. Just like Alice in Wonderland, she takes not one, but multiple drops through floors and ceilings. She crosses so many levels, smashing each wall she encounters, turning it to dust. Behind her, a tunnel made of many holes. Does it hurt, this fall? It looks like it does. It’s a free fall into her dream/consciousness/imagination. This is the way towards yet another world. An even deeper level of her imagination. Hopefully one which reality won’t be able to disturb because it won’t be able to reach.

As MO keeps falling, we’re being shown what’s going on in the building across. First, a man trying to keep another Clump out of his room. The man is afraid, he’s exhausted from holding the door, drops of sweat on his skin. He looks outside his windows and he sees MO falling. In another room, a familiar figure, Little Clump, approaches the window and he too sees MO’s descend. Somehow, the little creature seems to be afraid of this image, because it immediately retreats and hides from the view. Why is that? In the same room, what looks like a sick person lays on the bed. And there it is… All these people are ’sick’ people. Remember the inverted commas. All these people avoid reality (please remember the Bullett interview and the dichotomy ‘your world’ – ‘our world’). They’re ‘mentally ill’ persons, inside an institution, each of them undergoing a certain stage of their ‘treatment’ (hence I am not referring at mentally ill persons literally, but at people undergoing changes, mainly spiritual ones, people finding ‘cures’ for their ’sickness’). The first man is close to being ready for the plunge, reality is really trying to get him. The second person, the one on the bed, is calmer, he’s just starting the treatment, the representation of his reality is a child Clump. In the end, at least one of them would have to free fall.

Back to our lady. As she reaches the lower level of the building, the garage, we can see how violent the fall has been. Pieces of concrete cover her body. We are immediately shown the silhouette of  an old friend – the Volvo in T and In Concert – covered in plastic, as if waiting for her. No one else is around. Is it possible that she has reached the realm she wanted to reach? The fact that we’re in a garage and there’s a car waiting makes me think of a planned escape.

She’s close. As she strives to collect herself, she looks around once more to see whether she’s alone. On the hood of the Volvo – Clump. It clearly appeared in this very moment! It must have followed her down in her mind. It gets down from the car and starts marching towards MO. The latter fights to gather her body and her strengths. Something seems to drag her down still, something heavy. The thing surrounding her head – a concrete helmet. As she rises, we notice we’re dealing with a different MO – a warrior (she’s wearing a helmet, her body is protected by an armor and she also has a sword in her hand – a clear reference to her male counterpart, the knight in Y). To me, the act of leaving the helmet on the ground is a sign of her ‘losing her mind’. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. As I said before, one must lose himself when transforming himself. And this is what we’ve been witnessing through drops: a transformation. The vulnerable, tormented woman in sever becomes a determined strong warrior.The lyrics accompanying these images are suggestive. ‘Build up from ground’ remind us about deconstruction and reconstruction. Her body covered in concrete is a literal representation of reconstruction. Her weak body is reinforced with this concrete armor. Her ‘thin walls’ are rebuilt.

warrior

As she looks Clump in his face (!), she analyzes the situation and she decides she doesn’t need to use her sword to defeat him, so she drops it. This is not going to be that sort of fight. And how changed her attitude towards Clump is! At times, she even looks defiant. Visibly upset by this attitude, the creature starts to replicate itself, a thing which MO doesn’t expect. It’s how one’s fears manifest themselves. They hit hard, they attack from multiple parts, they always seem to be more than they appear. In the end, there are five Clumps surrounding her, with MO constantly analyzing her options. The positions of both Clumps and Jonna describe a prey surrounded by its hunters. A moment of silent, motionless tension, and then the Clumps begin their attack. The camera moves towards the center, focuses on MO, who bends her body forward, then straightens herself, closes her eyes and prepares for whatever comes. Is it going to be an impact? Are they going to fight? Is she going to imagine them away, make them disappear? We cannot tell for sure, but the fact that the last images in the video are concentrated on the vehicle (a means of escape), I think suggest that she’s in for a departure.

The audio in drops is very interesting and it comes to complete the imagery of the warrior and of the (internal/spiritual) fight. Those drums really sound like an incantation of a warrior goddess/ perfected self, they remind me of the rituals of passage/transformation in the ancient times.

Last, but not least, Jonna Lee’s interpretation of this MO is absolutely amazing. Her facial expressions and her body language are simply amazing! I mean we already knew this, but she keeps on getting better and better, it’s almost annoying :)

Some interesting details:

- the function of the plug

socket

- some things MO took with her during her fall, among which a plastic fork, a telephone, a blow dryer

details

- love the beautiful parallel they made during the falling scene between MO’s falling and the man’s beads of sweat dropping (1:44). While MO’s act was a courageous act (voluntary plunge), the man’s sweat represents him still being afraid. It’s a nice antithesis.

I’m mentioning again how sad it is that we cannot make the most out of the lyrics of this song. But kin doesn’t seem so far away anymore and I’m sure we’ll have them in June. In the meantime, I am definitely waiting for the development of the story in good worker. Two weeks!

Read 2020K’s Audio review of drops through here

Purchase drops on iTunes
Purchase drops on Amazon
Purchase drops on JunoDownload

iamamiwhoami; sever

4

Category : Entertainment, art

That’s why I am one and I am many,
I am two, three, I am four
I am honey and jar, I am sun and shade
I am light tear and uncontrolled passion
I am a figment of your imagination

love

sever - (v.t.) 1. To set or keep apart; divide or separate. 2. To cut off (a part) from a whole. 3. To break up (a relationship, for example); dissolve. (v. intr.) 1. To become cut or broken apart. 2. To become separated or divided from each other. Detach, disconnect, part, divide.

Lyrics (approx.):

My look so grand from a distance that you need to touch.
It gives a vision of the simple but it isn’t much.

I won’t be fooled by its touch,
an emotional supply,
The scent of a fail
in heavy love we dry,
The cold and the bare grass
so delicate by one’s eye,
It’s why we can’t ally
and elope tonight.

Almost forgotten the way we used to live for play.
To be accepted, I must blend into convention’s way
and sing the universal ways.

I won’t be fooled by its touch,
an emotional supply,
The scent of a fail
in heavy love we dry,
The cold in the bare grass
so delicate by one’s eye,
it’s why we can’t ally
and elope tonight.

The beginning of the track/video is quite interesting because it reminds me of the wailing part in the In Concert, right before Y, where MO was entering some sort of trance. It’s such a great parallel because it immediately tells me how this woman in sever feels. She’s distraught. She seems sad, anxious, close to being mentally ill. Actually, anxiety and depression were the first things that came into my mind when I first watched it. Her expression depicts a sense of loss and this is beautifully rendered by the lack of make up, clothes and of reference points. Her sight is void, if there’s something she looks at, it’s definitely not something from this world. Her mouth is half open, her lips are sometimes shaky, as if she’s trying to utter something. If there’s something she says, it’s definitely heard only in her mind. Her face is pale and it looks drained, a clear sign of exhaustion (mental), the lack of facial expressions – a sign of apathy, indifference.

There’s also a sense of pride and understanding. She raises both her eyebrows and her chin, pushing her jaw out and she starts nodding her head along the beat, in a disturbing, yet self-comforting ‘alright’. She understands the situation she’s in, she knows there’s now way out of it besides creating another situation, of her own. Because with sever, we’re dealing with two realities again, just like in B: objective and subjective.

While sever could mean so many things, including cutting the umbilical chord of a baby to detach him from his mother, at birth, the predominant feeling I am given by the images in this video is that of being confined, being separated from the outside. I see the verb used in both transitive and intransitive form. The woman is clearly trapped in this flat by someone. And she clearly separated herself from the subjective reality by entering the realm of her own imagination. Signs of separation:  she’s alone in the flat, the flat is empty, no furniture, so she could not use it to escape; lack of freedom, suggested by the antithesis outside (birds flying – flying birds are a sign of freedom and to place their imagery next to the one of the closed blinds is definitely an intention to portray an antithesis destined to enhance the feeling of being separated, confined. If you want, compare this image to the one in ‘kin‘, with the  white sheet of paper enclosed in the announcement box and the flight of the birds outside; trees) – inside (blinds being drawn)/ inwards (she keeps herself away from reality by escaping it via her imagination).

When she starts singing, her face begins to give away feelings. If you want, she looks as if she’s hiding the intention to run. By the way she moves her eyes to the left and right, keeping them down most of the time, she seems to have a secret plan. But where will she run?

The clump of hair is an instrument to me. It’s part of her imagination, of course. She first sits on it, as if on an armchair, playing indifferently with the strands of its hair. When it comes to life, there’s an easiness on MO’s face. It’s almost as if she’s aware of the power her imagination has and she’s sort of unleashing it, releasing it from the grasp of her arm.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what this clump of hair stands for. After watching the video for the first time, I thought it stands for her fears, for depression and anxiety themselves. As in at the beginning, she feels fear surrounding her, but doesn’t really sees it; then when she sees it she denies it, thus making it disappear trough the door, but only temporarily, because just when she thinks she’s free of it, it comes behind her and hits her hard, grabbing her in a dance. She first rejects it (pushes it away from her body), but then she learns its steps (dances along), then she acknowledges it (literally embraces it), after which she gently disposes of it (she dances by herself in the end). If so, it’s a nice allegory which depicts the inner fight of a depressive individual.

There’s an unexplained softness characterizing this monster. Apart from its size and lack of human features, it’s quite gentle both in texture and in movements. There are no sudden moves in its kinetics. When it runs, it seems to be flying, when it dances, it flows. It’s quite harmless, even when he jumps at MO and forces her into dancing, he’s still not harming her. He even has one side conversations with her, ha! It’s so like Carol from Where the Wild Things Are!!! MO’s best (imaginary) friend. And there’s the explanation. When one fears a monster/anything, the only way to get over this fear is to portray that monster/anything by diminishing its negative features, thus imagining it as being… well cute and cuddly.

Another approach to Clump is that it stands for the fans, the main argument being once more the lyrics. Of course they could send to us, iam is known for including such references, look at the previous songs and at the interview in Bullett Magazine. But do I think they’re blatantly telling us we’re suffocating them? Not really… First because it wasn’t the case and second because… well they’re releasing a lot of stuff in the immediate future.

Getting back to the video, when Clump raises from the ground and moves away from MO, we can feel a sense of detachment in her gestures. She sees the thing, but refuses to acknowledge it as it is. And this, in my opinion, is the moment she starts imagining. The cardboard boxes in front of her are a representation of her mind/imagination. Remember u-2 and my post CU’s A-LOC – Down the honeycomb and back ? That’s what he was doing, he was hallucinating, trapped inside his tormented mind, affected by the mandrake poison. When the boxes dissapear, we’re already in another world.

In this world, the Clump is talking to her, its gestures suggest he might be asking her to do something, or he might be trying to explain something to her, with MO refusing to do it (she nods ‘no’) or maybe negating its existence entirely (she turns her face away from it – ‘no, you’re not here’), hence Clump’s disappearing (for now).

When she sits on the floor and bends forward, it’s like she’s resting a little, overwhelmed by exhaustion. When she tries to move, it’s only a crawl she manages to get. But that’s still good. Notice how she doesn’t look towards the door when she does that. The presence of water in such little quantity is the presence of objective reality influence in subjective reality. Remember she just got out of the tub in reality (wet hair, towel around her body). Water is also a sign of the freedom the initial self had (notice how she touches it, trying to feel it, to move on and in it).

The next images are an example of great video editing. We have this sequence of the camera approaching the door, which creates the illusion that the door approaches MO, as if inviting her to open it and run. Yet she would only give it a look and then turn away. This is her safe place. Her imagination is not a thing to run from. As she moves along the corridor, she feels at ease, she lets her head fall backwards, as if relieved. The only time she seems afraid is when she enters the next room. Again, it’s not this place she fears, but the possibility of this place being invaded. Unaware of the movement taking place behind her, she goes at the window and looks outside, hopeful, placing her hands on her womb. In this world, she would conceive a child and she’d be happy.

Nonetheless, the door knob moves and Clump is back again, literally sneaking, running towards MO, grasping her, almost taking her down. This is the realization of the fact that her dream of happiness could be shattered. The dance that follows is such a beautiful metaphor for embracing your fears. Negating the existence of something does not make that thing go away. Acknowledging its existence and learning about it (she learns the steps of the dance) is the way to overcome it. Hence she becomes free of Clump in the end. Not by negating it, not by killing it, but by dancing it away.

Again… I can’t stay away from the Alraune reference, and I will say that MO looks and acts like Alma Raune, the designated wife, Alraune’s mother, the same one in 20101104 and Clump, artificially inseminated with the semen of a hanged man and kept confined in a white room until she gave birth. Until the child was born, Alma would only think of ways to escape, she refused to talk to her let’s call kidnappers (to me the men in B), looking apathetic and indifferent whenever they tried to calm her down, sometimes would scream and smash things around and she often threatened to commit suicide. One important thing regarding Alma is that she fancied the idea of having a child – this is why she agreed (well… she was tricked into it actually) to be a part of the experiment in the first place -, but she soon finds the truth and she knows she would be set apart from it. This is where the sense of loss comes from.

It’s the cover of sever which prevents me from not mentioning Alraune. You can clearly distinguish a woman’s womb if you look closer. This is still about pregnancy. About a child growing inside.

womb

Since we’ve touched the matter of covers, there’s a new trend of releasing images which, when altered, reveal more than the eye can see. It’s so iamamiwhoami! I love it! There are also other changes regarding the covers. They now lack the ‘to whom it may concern’ tag, which, of course, suggests a sense of belonging now, with iam being signed. The good thing is that sever seems to be the first in another series – recently confirmed by the announcement of the kin album in June aaaaand the release of drops on February 29th (what a convenient day!!!). Speaking of which:

drops cover

drops cover

I am not sure what drops refers at. Due to the fact that it looks more like a plural noun, I am inclined it to consider it as such, meaning drips. I could think of the sandals looking bottles in that futuristic image in Bullet Magazine. They seemed to contain liquid. But the verb to drop sends to abandonment, deterioration and even downfall. Another meaning which would be interesting to consider is that of the drops in music, which describe a section where the music will crescendo to a climax, pause briefly, then resume. So what could it be?

Also, here’s kin 20120611:

Purchase ’sever’ on Amazon
Purchase ’sever’ on iTunes
Purchase ’sever’ on JunoDownload (lossless)

Read 2020k’s audio analysis of ’sever’ here
We’re waiting for the first remixes to emerge, as well as for all beautiful unplugged covers.

Sever cover by Unplugged70:

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