The song in question? The Trapeze Swinger by Iron and Wine, also known as Sam Beam. Perfect, as music goes, simple and exquisite. Lyrics with poetic potency and just a tantalizing sound. It could inspire a dozen different stories - like really good music can. It could speak to incredible heartbreak or unspeakable joy. What did I see? A boy and a girl and a surreal German countryside, the familiar silhouette of Auschwitz. Remember that. That's important.
Think of it more as a prose poem than a short story. (Incidentally, it fits rather well into the current prompt at Becausewe'repoets. Utilizing simile and metaphor to describe something - simple enough, but 3,000 words is a little much to call a poem and it wasn't written with the prompt in mind).
Visions Set to Music
The crest of a hill breaks with a paintbrush-like sweeping across a grey nothing. The grass and deciduous trees bleed into being - for a moment grey then to sepia - richer and richer - emerald green and a blue sky erupting and somehow grey again. There's a road unfolding like a picnic blanket beaten against the wind. A sign in German. A figure walking down.
At the bottom of a hill is a cottage - behind it there's a well - it's impossible to perceive how close or how far the breadth between. There's a crescent of trees and heavy undergrowth beside it. The figure, a young man in appropriate brown era garb approaches the well - setting down a pack (it's got a military look) for his survival.
He lowers a rope down the well, and undresses without hesitation, before beginning a slow, calculated climb - naked - into the well. The sky remains the original empty shade of grey - the cottage stands, but is obviously abandoned. The deciduous trees are inkblots against the grey. There's no wind blowing but distantly there are liquid notes of windchimes sounding.
"Please remember me, happily
By the rosebush laughing..."
The boy sees a single unbroken circle of grey light at the mouth of the well, and he continues to look up into light as he meticulously lowers himself into encroaching darkness.
The light insists and insists - there's a little boy running around that same well in choppy little vignettes exposed - single pictures progressing like a flip book - fading again from grey to sepia to full god's own color - and somehow grey again. There's a certain aesthetic of a home movie clicking.
There's distant laughing and fragrance. He's running in circles, and again, you can't conceive the breadth of that grassy expanse between him now and then.
"With bruises on my chin, a time when
We counted every black car passing..."
In the crescent of trees a bit of mud and undergrowth comes alive in brown hair and eyes. The girl from the undergrowth blossoms up - and the boy must stop his running. An old black Mercedes rolling its way across the same hillcrest horizon that made the world, with a gruff animal sound insisting, insisting.
"Your house beneath the hill and up until
Someone caught us in the kitchen
With maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank
A vision too removed to mention..."
There's something like the clicking of typeset as the car glides across the hill - there's no quiver or bump - it exists outside the limits of wheels and fuel.
Light is insisting, insisting through a window across a breakfast nook with an old church pew as its seat against the wall. Light falls on broken ceramics through that same progression of colors - so many greens and firelight colors - all back into grey. There's young hands tracing across the table the grand tour, the orient express, Hannibal and elephants who jingle with heavy bellies full of coins and shatter in the alpine ice across a hillcrest horizon. There's a sense of an ending - suddenly there's broken ceramic in the sound of the windchimes. There's a woman in bright colors and a man in black. One in the home one in the house.
There's young hands tracing - gripping rope - lowering into the water and an unbroken circle of light heaving through colors but more and more grey.
"But please remember me, fondly
I heard from someone you're still pretty
And then they went on to say that the pearly gates
Had some eloquent graffiti..."
The boy has met the water now, and pulls sheets of it around himself as cloth - he looks forward into the damp walls of the well and looks up again - now at the base of a walled city - with a dull grey glow against the sky no longer empty but full of richly textured clouds - in fact the city complex appears to have been cut out of the sky. The city has a familiar silhouette.
It's like those old iron shadow plays. There's a line of people along train tracks waiting with a look of dull surprise. Before the wall's one protusion - a single square tower - the train tracks extend.
There's a gate open most of its width, and the roof floats on windows with grey men in the eaves. There's no change in color here. There's a sign in German. The walls are the wellwalls and the line of people moves closer and closer to the gate one by one - impossible to perceive how close or how far the breadth between them all.
There's a gate open most of its width, and the roof floats on windows with grey men in the eaves. There's no change in color here. There's a sign in German. The walls are the wellwalls and the line of people moves closer and closer to the gate one by one - impossible to perceive how close or how far the breadth between them all.
"Like 'We'll meet again, and 'Fuck the man'
And 'Tell my mother not to worry'..."
The line moves one by one with bellies heavy with broken ceramic jingling with each step. He's come close enough now - he feels something at his feet - the ground, and something at his forehead - the cusp of the water above. There's an initial shock of the lungs. Rain falls everywhere everywhere everywhere.
They - each of the drops - don't trail like tears, they fall flat like huge pancakes and shatter like elephants in alpine ice. As they touch the walls they strike the liquid notes of windchimes and start to fall instead like fine women's dresses, falling flags, picnic blankets beaten against the wind.
There's writing on the wall that's dull grey at first - but bleeds through into the shadowplay. They say nonsensical things in many languages.
"We'll meet again" "Semper ubi? Sub ubi." "Remember to put ribbons on ocelots" "Fuck the man " Weighed, measured, diet pending" "The golden age was yesterday - who knew?" "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" "you're in my sun" "there's a problem in the garden - talking slugs" "who made all the antelopes I've misplaced them" "The soft bray of my heart" "for a good time call Mark 3:19" "Sophie a Sophia Maria" "My words fly up - my thoughts" "why not both?" "Frei frei Freia cum Frei" "there's no one has a lighter" "Dashuria""You can see where we got it from"
"Tell my mother not to worry."
"And angels with their great handshakes
But always done in such a hurry..."
The boy walks along the tracks extending under the archway. There's a man in black who's too well dressed - clean and crisp with a smell of fine wet leather. They signal without touching hands - they hang on first syllables while they greet one another.
The gate is a circle of unbroken light, insisting, insisting through the raindrops falling flat like pancakes - falling west on his face and body awash in the cool water.
He's rising, the water is swelling. He's rising in the well.
"And please remember me, at Halloween
Making fools of all the neighbors..."
His face dips beneath the water and rises up again - the water pulls around him like silk. His face, behind a colorful mummer's mask, slips between new seams in the silver water. He's been pulled from behind a curtain, a blonde there behind him - he can't help but remember the smile. There's noises and laughter mounting and the grey sky has a colorful tent above to smother it. Brown hair and brown eyes depart just as soon behind another curtain - out of the tent. The atmosphere is heavy-bellied with light. In everything he remembers the twirling. Another eruption of color - the faint kiss of vomit and popcorn so intrinsic to a travelling show. There's lights outside from bonfires - the laughter permeates and goes on forever. He's smiling, and there's no imagining the scope of the tent or the lines and lines of people all erupting with laughter out from the grey tent in the shade of the nighttime.
"Our faces painted white, by midnight
We'd forgotten one another"
The laughter changes severely. Somehow it goes crooked. The laughter erupts from faces of dull surprise. There's no shouting nor any kind of gunfire, just something terribly, cosmically wrong with the laughter - it's not really different - something in the context.
There's yet another quake of colors and they're all wrong. Green grass gets swallowed up in orange and red -ruddy complexions - but every living face goes flush - every expression terribly blank. Dull surprise. The carnival music is again drowned in laughter, and people step into a long long line stretching on along the traintracks to a fortress and to a city with a familiar silhouette.
The boy looks around wide eyed - his face draining of color, a hand from the melting, fluid cloth pulls him back. He sinks again into the water - or rather the well water is swelling - he's swallowed up by the rain. The shock of the lungs. He's rising in the well.
There's the liquid tongues of cloth again, falling like fine dresses on hillcrests groaning, heaving like a picnic blanket beaten against the wind. The flapping cough of cloth becomes the watersounds and the wellwalls. He's rising in the well.
The rope remains just there - tight to the wall below the unbroken circle of light insisting, insisting.
"and when the morning came
I was ashamed..."
He presses his hand against the wet wellwall and pulls the rope - a curtain ascends and there's people in the cellar looking cold - there's a flash of color - but so labored so different their grey clothes just for a moment hint at their colorful beads and tambourines. Tucked together like undergrowth.
"only now it seems so silly
that season left the word and then returned
And now you're lit up by the city..."
He presses again the cold wellwall and feels the whole long wall fall flat. There's well walls extending, extending unfolding like puzzleboxes or the old ironwork shadowplays. There's a rope for a moment all red and orange and crooked - the gruff animal sound of old Mercedes behind every unique turn. Around another turn the flat rain falls west onto his face from the unbroken circle of light - and the building with a familiar silhouette.
Atop the central tower there's the well dressed man in black and a smell of vomit and popcorn so intrinsic to a travelling show.
"So please remember me, mistakenly
In the window of the tallest tower
Call, then pass us by, but much too high
To see the empty road at happy hour..."
A paintbrush-like sweeping soars overhead - leaving rope trailing down from the sky along the traintracks extending - a breadth of unbroken rope you can't conceive, that's rooted somewhere beyond the gate in the dark of a familiar silhouette. Men and women in lines depart into raindrops billowing like fine dresses against the unbroken circle of light.
"Gleam and resonate just like the gates
Around the Holy Kingdom
With words, like 'Lost and Found'
and 'Don't look Down'
and 'Someone save temptation'..."
The rain is coming from every direction - converging on the boy. He's rising in the well. The walls of the city bleed through - an odd well-wall wallpaper peels and drifts away with the jingling of broken ceramic - there's words, nothing but words from pinnacle to foundation.
"Lost and found" "Siuil a ruin" "Will there be good fruit?" "Male, Age 21, seeking imaginary friend"
Quoth the Raven" "Etre ou pas - etre Ca c'est" "yes I said yes I will. Yes" "Don't look down" "Hold your breath" "you'd be surprised" "The incompatible multitudes be" "Cogito Ergo Es" "I had roses" "She's not alone" "People who need people are the luckiest people" "silence says" "the minor fall, the major lift" "open your eyes" "l'infer est l'autre" "don't drop the lighter, Prometheus" "We'll meet at the bar after" "after time you'll hear me say that I'm so lucky" "Things fall apart" "lost child, pick up at exit" "anyone got a light? need to smoke" "people's revolution - inquire within" "this space intentionally left blank" "alliesthesia" "there was time" "Galahad go back"Au fil de mes jours t'ai-je rencontre" "no pets allowed" "no poets allowed" "someone save temptation"
Quoth the Raven" "Etre ou pas - etre Ca c'est" "yes I said yes I will. Yes" "Don't look down" "Hold your breath" "you'd be surprised" "The incompatible multitudes be" "Cogito Ergo Es" "I had roses" "She's not alone" "People who need people are the luckiest people" "silence says" "the minor fall, the major lift" "open your eyes" "l'infer est l'autre" "don't drop the lighter, Prometheus" "We'll meet at the bar after" "after time you'll hear me say that I'm so lucky" "Things fall apart" "lost child, pick up at exit" "anyone got a light? need to smoke" "people's revolution - inquire within" "this space intentionally left blank" "alliesthesia" "there was time" "Galahad go back"Au fil de mes jours t'ai-je rencontre" "no pets allowed" "no poets allowed" "someone save temptation"
"And please remember me as in the dream
We had as rug burned babies
Among the fallen trees and fast asleep..."
He's rising in the well - brambles fall alongside the rain like falling flags, like fine women's dresses. They cover him completely in their thorns and leaves - he climbs out from this undergrowth before a brilliant tent - all colors now - every brilliant orange and red. Without hesitation he dives beneath a fold of cloth and elephants who jingle with tambourines on their heavy bellies cast shadows on the silken walls. Brown eyes blink out of sight under twirling brown hair. He pushes back the silk in pursuit as everything is somehow grey again.
"Besides the lions and the ladies"
A hand pulls him in to twirl with her. Laughter erupts richly, drowning out the carnival song and dances. There's long blue shadows on orange cloth walls - and labored breathing of shocked lungs - it's difficult not to laugh at the colors so intensely mounting.
"That called you what you like and even might
Give a gift for your behavior..."
There's a shift and everything is wrong. They keep spinning until they fall into one another. They've wrung the color out of the walls somehow, their shadows turn everything to gears and old ironwork shadowplays. There's young hands tracing over cheeks and laughter and lips and song and grey light and the same but somehow gone crooked insisting, insisting.
"A fleeting chance to see a trapeze
Swinger high as any savior..."
As they fall - lips breaking into the broken chorus of laughs - he catches a bit of the tent wall - pulling it down with him - everything's in grey. He looks up just in time to see a paintbrush-like sweeping - a trapeze marks the horizon that made the world. Collapsing he sinks beneath the cloth as his hand grasps the falling rope - as it becomes taut - the cloth becomes water again - engulfed he's gasping for air. He's rising in the well.
"But please remember me my misery
And how it lost me all I wanted..."
The rain is thundering against the water in the well - it finally drowns the laughter.
He's tucked in the back of an old black Mercedes - the window is glared by an unbroken circle of light. Brown eyes look to him under old the shade of the nighttime. There's young hands tracing and the liquid tones of broken ceramic swallowed up in the clicking of typeset. Light's insisting, insisting in her brown eyes, and there's warmth and a triumph of color all losing itself in grey - everything, everything that's been before, he sees again.
"Those dogs that love the rain
and chasing trains
the colored birds above their running..."
There's the hushed sound of rain and gruff sound in the footsoles of Dobermans against mud. The Brown eyes blink out of sight into a sudden eruption of bramble and undergrowth. Smoke rises lazily above a new horizon in a paintbrush-like sweeping and a young boy stoops behind the well to see the people all muddied and suddenly overcome with colors bright and frightening. The crooked sounds of their tambourines fall like picnic blankets beaten against the wind - there's brown eyes unbroken insisting insisting.
"In circles round the well and where it spells
On the wall behind St. Peter
So bright on cinder grey in spray paint
Who the hell can see forever?"
The boy looks up. He's rising in the well. There's the gruff animal sounds of an old Mercedes skirting along the ground - falling west, unburdened by bump or fault. Just behind on the horizon there's a familiar silhouette. A well dressed man swings his cane like a pendulum and there is - tucked into a corner - near a well before a crescent of undergrowth behind a single square tower the words " who the hell can see forever?"
"And please remember me, seldomly
In the car behind the carnival
My hand between your knees
You turn from me..."
He trips into the undergrowth, gasping for air. He's rising in the well - there's young hands tracing the peripheries of the unbroken circle of light - just there at length - just too close to know the scope.
"and said the Trapeze act was wonderful
But never meant to last, the clowns that passed
saw me just come up with anger..."
Brown eyes blink out of sight behind an erupting bramble of brown hair, and there's a light crooked girl's laughter. A torrent of rain comes crashing down - drowning the gruff animal noise of a gliding Mercedes and gear-shadow dogs.
"When it filled with circus dogs
the parking lot
had an element of danger..."
There's young hands tracing the wellwall and its labyrinths - the long horizons sweeping on for ages but there's nothing left at all. He falls out of a black Mercedes car - soaked in the rain - falling west - against the hard well walls.
"So please remember me finally
And all my uphill clawing..."
He lays against the well-wall, ready to sleep, and the rope rests against him. He reaches up to the rain falling west. There's the mouth of the well - jutting out crooked from the crescent of bramble and undergrowth. He crawls along the wellwall on all fours - there's young hands tracing now the free air just outside the familiar silhouette - the world goes crooked, or somehow right again and he rolls out of the well to the ground - looking up at a world less-topsy-turvy than before. In the sky there's a paintbrush-like sweeping of a trapeze and the bleeding through of a familiar silhouette.
"My dear, but if I make the Pearly Gates
I'll do my best to make a drawing of God
and Lucifer, a boy and girl
An angel kissin' on a sinner
A monkey and a man, a marching band..."
The boy gets up and all the world pulses through color it seems for the last time. He walks along the wall - as the rain falls and the words bleed away and fade. His young hands tracing the well wall wallpaper folding itself back into place. He leaves the walls behind and walks along the hillcrest over cottage and crescent of undergrowth trees. The clouds for a second are rich in texture - monkeys, angels, musical instruments forming and unforming in luscious cumulus sex. A paintbrush like sweeping of the horizon that made the world - and everything lost in empty grey.
"And all around a frightened Trapeze Swinger"
He's gliding over the hillcrest horizon along the traintracks unfolding like a fine dress beaten against the wind. He's rising in the well. There's brown eyes insisting, insisting and it's all caught up in the colors he remembers all melting into a grey unbroken circle of light - insisting, insisting.
Postpoem Review Preface:
This review will likely take the rest of my life. I'll have to go paragraph by paragraph (and god knows grammatically it's a mess but that's hardly the point, you know? I know it's rhythms by heart so it's very difficult to see the misplaced dashes, periods, apostrophes, and other such abominations).
I think this would make the most delightful surreal-animation-music-video-tribute sort of thing. If I had any sort of artistic talent that's how this would have turned out.
Anyway. On to the navel contemplation. When I discussed this song with a friend he was appalled by this particular interpretation. He heard love and loss and all that, but it was thoroughly suburban, even classic Americana. What does it say about me that I can darken anything? Easier to snuff out a fire than build one I suppose. There's certainly nothing in the song to imply whatever I've inferred from it.
Of course that leads to another thought - how exactly does one go about fictionalizing the holocaust? I'm fairly certain you can. I'm utterly certain you shouldn't. It's already mythical enough simply by being both remote and inspiring. The second it becomes a backdrop for anyone's fucking song interpretation is the second it's not being taken seriously. It takes its place alongside civil wars and romanticized medieval villages as a whitewashed and quaint backdrop of sufficient sadness to drive home a point. This gives me no end of personal conflict.
So instead of attempting to rewrite it in a less offensive way I'll simply say mea culpa - I've done a bad thing, and move on to unraveling it.
Review:
The crest of a hill comes before the grey nothing, because to specify that there's nothing beforehand is sort of existentially confusing. The paintbrush-like sweeping creates a physical horizon, but it's also signalling a transition from nothingness into somethingness - and in doing so comes to define nothing itself (this particular nothing is grey). To start with "a grey nothing is broken by a paintbrush-like sweeping" is entirely inaccurate, and doesn't properly emphasize that the hill's horizon is literally all there is. The horizon remains one of the few backdrops of the story, and arguably the hardest to explain.
The horizon is seemingly the location where the "real world" exists. It's contrasted by the ethereal afterlife of the "familiar silhouette" and the hallucinatory moistness of "the well." The story is presented as occurring presently, but there's a tone of memory - frequent glimpses into the boy's past. It's difficult to tell whether the narrator (some sort of third person, omniscience questionable) is observing this or experiencing it alongside the boy. Is he awakening to this experience, is the experience opening up to him? How exactly does a conscience entity exist in the aforementioned nothingness-as-that-which-has-not-yet-been-defined? These are the things that make me roll my eyes because oh good lord just get on with it but the question of perception's an important one.
The foliage "bleeds" into being. Evocative enough, but the implication of inkpainting implies that what's being seen is an impression of reality, or somehow concealed by a film. The mounting color is a new dimension that attempts to capture a sense of synesthesia or hallucination. It's a little druggy, for lack of a better term. The "eruption" of blue is almost immediately trivialized as a passing thing. Color remains extrinsic to the story for much of it. The fact that for a while it's in sepia implies a reproduction - a memory - a treated image - an old-timey daguerreotype- a pretentious instagram filter.
Beating a picnic blanket against the wind is the first image of struggle and failure. It's a mundane activity, but it's fairly violent to picture. There's a solid fwshing crack to its sound.
A sign in german. Exceedingly unhelpful as a placemarker, but there you have it. The figure would almost certainly be the boy except at this point there's no certainty. The scene is still being set.
The distance between the cottage and the well is immeasurable - it's another image of struggle and failure, but it's also just the quality of dreams and memory - that inability to place distances and locations accurately.
----
A short compilation of the interwoven images, roughly in the order they're first mentioned:
Crest of the hill
Paintbrush-like sweeping
Grey
Bleeding
Grey to color to grey
Picnic Blanket Beaten Against the Wind
A sign in German
Impossible to perceive how close or how far
Crescent of trees
Undergrowth
the Rope
the Well
Without hesitation
Liquid notes of windchimes
Unbroken circle of light
Insisting, insisting
Clicking of typeset
Brown hair and eyes
Old black mercedes
Gruff, animal sound
Without quiver or bump
Broken ceramics
Young hands tracing
Elephants who jingle in alpine ice
Heavy bellies
Man in black
Water as sheets of cloth
Walls of the well
Familiar silhouette
Richly textured clouds
Ironwork shadowplays
Line of people along traintracks
Look of dull surprise/ dull grey grow
Single square tower
Traintracks extending
Shock of the lungs
Flat like pancakes
Fine women's dresses, falling flags
Writing on walls
Falling west
He's rising in the well
Smell of vomit and popcorn
Laughter
Twirling
the Shade of the nighttime
Gone crooked
Tambourines
Wellwall wallpaper peeling
God I hope that's all of them. 48 interwoven images (though some of them could be considered one and the same - I'll go over that in my review should I ever manage to finish it).
"But please remember me my misery
And how it lost me all I wanted..."
The rain is thundering against the water in the well - it finally drowns the laughter.
He's tucked in the back of an old black Mercedes - the window is glared by an unbroken circle of light. Brown eyes look to him under old the shade of the nighttime. There's young hands tracing and the liquid tones of broken ceramic swallowed up in the clicking of typeset. Light's insisting, insisting in her brown eyes, and there's warmth and a triumph of color all losing itself in grey - everything, everything that's been before, he sees again.
"Those dogs that love the rain
and chasing trains
the colored birds above their running..."
There's the hushed sound of rain and gruff sound in the footsoles of Dobermans against mud. The Brown eyes blink out of sight into a sudden eruption of bramble and undergrowth. Smoke rises lazily above a new horizon in a paintbrush-like sweeping and a young boy stoops behind the well to see the people all muddied and suddenly overcome with colors bright and frightening. The crooked sounds of their tambourines fall like picnic blankets beaten against the wind - there's brown eyes unbroken insisting insisting.
"In circles round the well and where it spells
On the wall behind St. Peter
So bright on cinder grey in spray paint
Who the hell can see forever?"
The boy looks up. He's rising in the well. There's the gruff animal sounds of an old Mercedes skirting along the ground - falling west, unburdened by bump or fault. Just behind on the horizon there's a familiar silhouette. A well dressed man swings his cane like a pendulum and there is - tucked into a corner - near a well before a crescent of undergrowth behind a single square tower the words " who the hell can see forever?"
"And please remember me, seldomly
In the car behind the carnival
My hand between your knees
You turn from me..."
He trips into the undergrowth, gasping for air. He's rising in the well - there's young hands tracing the peripheries of the unbroken circle of light - just there at length - just too close to know the scope.
"and said the Trapeze act was wonderful
But never meant to last, the clowns that passed
saw me just come up with anger..."
Brown eyes blink out of sight behind an erupting bramble of brown hair, and there's a light crooked girl's laughter. A torrent of rain comes crashing down - drowning the gruff animal noise of a gliding Mercedes and gear-shadow dogs.
"When it filled with circus dogs
the parking lot
had an element of danger..."
There's young hands tracing the wellwall and its labyrinths - the long horizons sweeping on for ages but there's nothing left at all. He falls out of a black Mercedes car - soaked in the rain - falling west - against the hard well walls.
"So please remember me finally
And all my uphill clawing..."
He lays against the well-wall, ready to sleep, and the rope rests against him. He reaches up to the rain falling west. There's the mouth of the well - jutting out crooked from the crescent of bramble and undergrowth. He crawls along the wellwall on all fours - there's young hands tracing now the free air just outside the familiar silhouette - the world goes crooked, or somehow right again and he rolls out of the well to the ground - looking up at a world less-topsy-turvy than before. In the sky there's a paintbrush-like sweeping of a trapeze and the bleeding through of a familiar silhouette.
"My dear, but if I make the Pearly Gates
I'll do my best to make a drawing of God
and Lucifer, a boy and girl
An angel kissin' on a sinner
A monkey and a man, a marching band..."
The boy gets up and all the world pulses through color it seems for the last time. He walks along the wall - as the rain falls and the words bleed away and fade. His young hands tracing the well wall wallpaper folding itself back into place. He leaves the walls behind and walks along the hillcrest over cottage and crescent of undergrowth trees. The clouds for a second are rich in texture - monkeys, angels, musical instruments forming and unforming in luscious cumulus sex. A paintbrush like sweeping of the horizon that made the world - and everything lost in empty grey.
"And all around a frightened Trapeze Swinger"
He's gliding over the hillcrest horizon along the traintracks unfolding like a fine dress beaten against the wind. He's rising in the well. There's brown eyes insisting, insisting and it's all caught up in the colors he remembers all melting into a grey unbroken circle of light - insisting, insisting.
Postpoem Review Preface:
This review will likely take the rest of my life. I'll have to go paragraph by paragraph (and god knows grammatically it's a mess but that's hardly the point, you know? I know it's rhythms by heart so it's very difficult to see the misplaced dashes, periods, apostrophes, and other such abominations).
I think this would make the most delightful surreal-animation-music-video-tribute sort of thing. If I had any sort of artistic talent that's how this would have turned out.
Anyway. On to the navel contemplation. When I discussed this song with a friend he was appalled by this particular interpretation. He heard love and loss and all that, but it was thoroughly suburban, even classic Americana. What does it say about me that I can darken anything? Easier to snuff out a fire than build one I suppose. There's certainly nothing in the song to imply whatever I've inferred from it.
Of course that leads to another thought - how exactly does one go about fictionalizing the holocaust? I'm fairly certain you can. I'm utterly certain you shouldn't. It's already mythical enough simply by being both remote and inspiring. The second it becomes a backdrop for anyone's fucking song interpretation is the second it's not being taken seriously. It takes its place alongside civil wars and romanticized medieval villages as a whitewashed and quaint backdrop of sufficient sadness to drive home a point. This gives me no end of personal conflict.
So instead of attempting to rewrite it in a less offensive way I'll simply say mea culpa - I've done a bad thing, and move on to unraveling it.
Review:
The crest of a hill comes before the grey nothing, because to specify that there's nothing beforehand is sort of existentially confusing. The paintbrush-like sweeping creates a physical horizon, but it's also signalling a transition from nothingness into somethingness - and in doing so comes to define nothing itself (this particular nothing is grey). To start with "a grey nothing is broken by a paintbrush-like sweeping" is entirely inaccurate, and doesn't properly emphasize that the hill's horizon is literally all there is. The horizon remains one of the few backdrops of the story, and arguably the hardest to explain.
The horizon is seemingly the location where the "real world" exists. It's contrasted by the ethereal afterlife of the "familiar silhouette" and the hallucinatory moistness of "the well." The story is presented as occurring presently, but there's a tone of memory - frequent glimpses into the boy's past. It's difficult to tell whether the narrator (some sort of third person, omniscience questionable) is observing this or experiencing it alongside the boy. Is he awakening to this experience, is the experience opening up to him? How exactly does a conscience entity exist in the aforementioned nothingness-as-that-which-has-not-yet-been-defined? These are the things that make me roll my eyes because oh good lord just get on with it but the question of perception's an important one.
The foliage "bleeds" into being. Evocative enough, but the implication of inkpainting implies that what's being seen is an impression of reality, or somehow concealed by a film. The mounting color is a new dimension that attempts to capture a sense of synesthesia or hallucination. It's a little druggy, for lack of a better term. The "eruption" of blue is almost immediately trivialized as a passing thing. Color remains extrinsic to the story for much of it. The fact that for a while it's in sepia implies a reproduction - a memory - a treated image - an old-timey daguerreotype- a pretentious instagram filter.
Beating a picnic blanket against the wind is the first image of struggle and failure. It's a mundane activity, but it's fairly violent to picture. There's a solid fwshing crack to its sound.
A sign in german. Exceedingly unhelpful as a placemarker, but there you have it. The figure would almost certainly be the boy except at this point there's no certainty. The scene is still being set.
The distance between the cottage and the well is immeasurable - it's another image of struggle and failure, but it's also just the quality of dreams and memory - that inability to place distances and locations accurately.
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A short compilation of the interwoven images, roughly in the order they're first mentioned:
Crest of the hill
Paintbrush-like sweeping
Grey
Bleeding
Grey to color to grey
Picnic Blanket Beaten Against the Wind
A sign in German
Impossible to perceive how close or how far
Crescent of trees
Undergrowth
the Rope
the Well
Without hesitation
Liquid notes of windchimes
Unbroken circle of light
Insisting, insisting
Clicking of typeset
Brown hair and eyes
Old black mercedes
Gruff, animal sound
Without quiver or bump
Broken ceramics
Young hands tracing
Elephants who jingle in alpine ice
Heavy bellies
Man in black
Water as sheets of cloth
Walls of the well
Familiar silhouette
Richly textured clouds
Ironwork shadowplays
Line of people along traintracks
Look of dull surprise/ dull grey grow
Single square tower
Traintracks extending
Shock of the lungs
Flat like pancakes
Fine women's dresses, falling flags
Writing on walls
Falling west
He's rising in the well
Smell of vomit and popcorn
Laughter
Twirling
the Shade of the nighttime
Gone crooked
Tambourines
Wellwall wallpaper peeling
God I hope that's all of them. 48 interwoven images (though some of them could be considered one and the same - I'll go over that in my review should I ever manage to finish it).
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