This song is one that I have
listened to for 8 years and never really nailed down what I thought about it or
what it meant to me. Not until recently. When deciding on the song for this
project I had actually chosen another, but after I had a late-night
conversation with a friend, the meaning suddenly revealed itself to me.
The revelation of the pain and the
hurt she’d been hiding in plain sight was almost overwhelming to hear about.
But when she spoke about it I began hearing this song and suddenly it was all
making sense to me. It was as though the song had been waiting all those years
for her to come to me. I had to tell her story. The connection between my
images and the music stems from the long, drawn-out notes coming from the
keyboard and the guitars. They were a symbol to me of her imprisonment by her
own feelings – they just seem to go on and on. Going along with that, the whole
song has an eerie, almost alien sound to it. Again, this is a reflection of how
she felt about being so consumed by this situation. She never imagined she
would have been caught in it, but it sneaked up on her, “like a snake in the
grass” as she put it.
I chose to never show her face. The
reason was twofold: First, to not reveal the identity of my friend, who others
in class may know. And the second was an attempt to convey a message and communicate
emotions without revealing them through facial expressions. Instead, I used the
rest of her body, mostly the feet and her hands. I once saw it done in Catch Me If You Can and have always wished to try it.
Whenever I finished the song I
never felt good. I think it was because it doesn’t exactly have a resolution.
Similarly, neither do the images. Not every story ends happy. Not every story
really ends. She may be living this story for the rest of her life.
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