Music Thursday - Ship in a Bottle

I was recently scolded for not watching enough music videos so I thought to give few of them a go and in the process I seem to have stumbled upon a curious, heartwarming puzzle.

It was like this:

I have been down lately. I am so depressed I dream in rich, over-saturated, overwhelming color and action sequences are so poignant I can hardly function at all when I wake up. I stare at my hands on the keyboard in silence for minutes on end and I let thoughts drown before my mind's eye rather than putting them to life by writing them down. I lie awake in the middle of the night as the Moon slowly drifts by my window, I lie frozen in sadness because where I knew something important and dear to me once was there is just silent and awkward emptiness. And it feels like a barren void where pulled tooth once was feels when you probe it with the tip of your tongue.

It feels like it shouldn't be empty but it is and that's the fact.

For weeks I could not listen to any music with vocals at home. I listened to radio at work and in my car and I've attended concerts where I see live people pouring their stories into songs but I could not manage to listen to lyrics at home. It just felt wrong to feel foreign story inside myself because mine was so persistently silent.

And then this talk about music videos came and I went and opened YouTube and sat there for ten minutes thinking what to search for. As I sat there I remembered driving home from work one day and hearing Brandon Flowers say:

Don't want your picture
On my cell phone
I want you here with me

...and it felt so familiar and so intimate.

It felt... it felt just like this passage from Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium:

Mr. Edward Magorium: [to Molly, about dying] When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is "He dies." It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "He dies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words.
[pause, walks over to Molly]
Mr. Edward Magorium: I've lived all five of my acts, Mahoney, and I am not asking you to be happy that I must go. I'm only asking that you turn the page, continue reading... and let the next story begin. And if anyone asks what became of me, you relate my life in all its wonder, and end it with a simple and modest "He died."
Molly Mahoney: [starting to sob] I love you.
Mr. Edward Magorium: I love you, too.
[picks Molly up, sighs heavily]
Mr. Edward Magorium: Your life is an occasion. Rise to it. 

It felt like: "He dies.". Like a perfectly non-ceremonious summation of a sadness bigger then life.

So I typed in the words and this video appeared. Take 4 minutes and 57 seconds to see it.

Tim Burton directed this one and it features two professional actors incarnating professionally a story that mostly, but not entirely, shows the story from song lyrics - and I love how Mr. Burton chose to interpret vague bits prone to poetic license.

It is made in rich, over-saturated, overwhelming color and action sequences are so poignant I sat there dumbfounded with tears the size of gooseberries rolling down my cheeks.

I love how it shows that a person falls in love with an unknown. With his own interpretation of a mystery inside a secret. With a thing that is not in the other person but in his own self.

I love how it shows that for some of  us love is not a matter of settling for but of a meticulous, vigilant search for something we already know is valuable even without us and we'd like to participate in and increase its value, not own it.

I love how it shows that unorthodox and painful choices must be made by our own selves, choices that cut into our own personalities to make us willingly more approachable and that the worth of a man is not appraised only by the knowledge he has but also the knowledge he has and chooses not to use.

Well I saw you in a restaurant
The other day
And instead of walking towards you
I ran away
And I'll keep on waiting for you
Till you'll come around
Come around and say

And then  I love - the most! - wondrous surprise at the end, where wicks are lit on both of the characters - the perceived active and passive (isn't it always that someone must lead for someone else to follow) of the story and only then the variable of TIME turns their existence into life.


Because without burning candle is just an awkward dead stick.