iamamiwhoami; drops

6

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
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Purchase drops on JunoDownload

Comments (6)

Hello hello,
thanks for the analysis. It’s always interesting to read your approach, you put so much work in it! So, I do agree with you in most terms, I just would like to open the dialog and maybe put a things on table for question. Would be interesting to hear, what you think:

First of all, I’d like to remember what iam all stands for and what the actual statement is: it’s the revolution. It’s the “break out what society makes you”, “you can heal the world if you stop acting like a generic”, it’s the “get back to nature” and it’s the “heal your world”. As said, this second campaign can maybe be seen as a prologue before bounty: “heal yourself, wake up, before you go out”

Then of course the analogy of the building complex. It’s a battery. You’re inside, you’re trapped. You’re definitely not getting healed there. The higher you are, the more difficult it will be to get down. You look out of the window, and you see no horizon. It is what it is: sleep, work, sleep, work – it’s what society has made you. You’re in the system.

The clump. It’s our ways and means (ha!), it’s our fears, it’s our burdens, our worries, it’s love and it’s destruction.
In Sever, the process of the division, she accepts the clump. She knows it’s there, though she doesn’t like it. It’s like a husband that’s abused her for all her life.

The act of dancing, a contemplative one, frees her from clump. She finally realizes that it’s dead, it’s a farce, it’s always been something that she controlled not vice versa. So, as you said, she’s facing it and going right through it.

The act of falling. Imaging you’d leave everything behind, leave society, all that we know, all common knowledge, all securities, money, work, friends, attitudes and systems. It’s the feeling you get. You’d have nothing, begin from scratch, live like a savage (maybe in nature) in order to build up something new. The act of falling symbolizes the insecurity when you literally leave the system (the building/battery) and go down to the ground of it.

The rest is pretty much it: the Volvo is the Volvo that’s been bringing them to the woods in the concert. Where Shoot Up The Station was healed, he was cleansed by the fire and brought back as a new him, a world that doesn’t exist for us, where days are nights.

I think we can only understand ‘John’ when this campaign ended, as it might also be something that is actually meant to be at the very end of it.

So, curious to hear what you think. Keep up your blog, I love it!

Regards from Vienna,
Flo

very good work dariana, also i very much agree on flo’s points. my simple interpretation:

in ’sever’ there’s a woman who feels uncomfortable in her new environment, severed from nature.
she wants to be free, back to her natural place. she feels caught in her role, e.g. as a housewife in a sterile apartment. the dust mop becomes a threatening icon in her oppressive life.
at times she tries to get used to this life – she stops to fight back and dances with the mop. but after all she can’t overcome her fears and she drops down even deeper into depression. the anxiety explodes, symbolized by the multiplication of the mop in the end of ‘drops’.

@Flo First of all thanks for reading my thoughts and bringing your input. I could not agree more. There are several plans to analyze iamamiwhoami by and one of them is the one you approached. How these symbols connect to everyday reality. Many of the points you’ve reached have been touched by iam themselves in the interview in Bullet. It’s more than clear they do stand for a revolution for evolution :)
I think we can only understand ALL of iam when this is over, not only ; john. I’m not really in for fully understanding though. I mean look at how many things we’re thinking of when watching just one video. I’ve said it before: this is a new type of art/music. One i which the product acts upon its receiver from the inside, producing changes which remain effective on a long term.
@diz I agree about her going deeper into depression. However, her becoming a warrior towards the end is a good sign. Veeeeery curious of where she’s heading next. Even deeper, or on her way out (and here comes the image of the men emerging from the pipes in ; john :) )?

[...] out ForsakenOrder.com’s Video Analysis of “Drops”. Wonderful as always. Share [...]

Some lyrics have changed by the way. Check out the iamamiwhoami WIKIA for the updated lyrics.

ta very much, ditto

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