“Oh, your absence resounds like a siren,But my presence brings no more than silence
For the times I’ve behaved like a switchblade,
For the blame when I should have just forgave…
Where do you go
When those darker wild eyes show?
If I lead you straight up to
The loneliest landscape you knew,
Boy, would you care
If you lost me there?
I was blessed with your good intention,
But your kindness gets no reflection.
All the words you hear without listening,
Oh, you waste them all on the missing.
Where do you go
When those darker wild eyes show?
If I lead you straight up to
The loneliest landscape you knew,
Boy, would you care
If you lost me there?”
[ Switchblade – Phildel ]
Ninth work from The Disappearance Of The Girl.
Switchblade is another song I love very much but was very difficult to pull off. Like Union Stone, it’s a very abstract song about an equally elusive concept and its only concrete metaphore, the switchblade, works better in literary form than visually. It was quite a hard piece of work to do, so I decided to read between the lines looking for its more general meaning and to let the music itself guide me. For one thing, the song feels “sunny” to me, which was a start for the general mood of the picture. Then, the chorus makes me think of a multitude of butterflies suddenly released in a wide space, or something floating in the air, on which I decided to elaborate. Finally, I think the underlying theme of the song is basically loneliness caused by the mistakes of the speaker in a relationship. It sounds like some sort of apology, the desire to reach for the addressee of the song. So there we go, I had a loose idea to start from.
The first thing I decided was to use a rural location, a “lonely landscape”, to give an idea of solitude – and again, Luisa and I were very lucky that we could get a lift out of town. Then, of course, I included the eponymous switchblade but I tried to turn it into a visual metaphore as well: the blade is bloody, which symbolises emotional wounds, but the blood floats in the air like magical painting trying to call back the person who left. It is supposed to symbolise how the emotional wounds were mostly unintentional and born because of love anyways. In many ways, this parallels Storm Song, but since the song has a softer mood, I settled for a softer image as well. And of course the butterflies, because to me they are in the song, period!
I have to admit that for this work I put a greater emphasis on the visual side to make up for the rather elusive concept, and if anything I hope I at least managed to create a beautiful work to behold, especially while listening to the song. It’s a bit more about visuals and mood, but I still think it stays quite true to the song.
Switchblade is another song I love very much but was very difficult to pull off. Like Union Stone, it’s a very abstract song about an equally elusive concept and its only concrete metaphore, the switchblade, works better in literary form than visually. It was quite a hard piece of work to do, so I decided to read between the lines looking for its more general meaning and to let the music itself guide me. For one thing, the song feels “sunny” to me, which was a start for the general mood of the picture. Then, the chorus makes me think of a multitude of butterflies suddenly released in a wide space, or something floating in the air, on which I decided to elaborate. Finally, I think the underlying theme of the song is basically loneliness caused by the mistakes of the speaker in a relationship. It sounds like some sort of apology, the desire to reach for the addressee of the song. So there we go, I had a loose idea to start from.
The first thing I decided was to use a rural location, a “lonely landscape”, to give an idea of solitude – and again, Luisa and I were very lucky that we could get a lift out of town. Then, of course, I included the eponymous switchblade but I tried to turn it into a visual metaphore as well: the blade is bloody, which symbolises emotional wounds, but the blood floats in the air like magical painting trying to call back the person who left. It is supposed to symbolise how the emotional wounds were mostly unintentional and born because of love anyways. In many ways, this parallels Storm Song, but since the song has a softer mood, I settled for a softer image as well. And of course the butterflies, because to me they are in the song, period!
I have to admit that for this work I put a greater emphasis on the visual side to make up for the rather elusive concept, and if anything I hope I at least managed to create a beautiful work to behold, especially while listening to the song. It’s a bit more about visuals and mood, but I still think it stays quite true to the song.
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