Sunday, May 3, 2009

What's going on



I saw this Marvin Gaye video a week ago at first time, and it had a huge effect on me. Its melody came back to my mind every day and I felt an intense desire to watch it again. The music and the video is perfectly synchronized: these old, fallow pictures from the past is very sorrowful and beautiful for me at the same time. It's a feeling that I can't draw, let alone write down, but I'll try it in few words: the beautifulness of life is mixed with the sadness of it, and this makes it so emotional. Those people on the video perhaps don't even live yet, and those children are adult now. They've come from a hard place and time. I always like this kind of blending in music, and also in films... and in my life, too. As we remember to old stories there's always the passing in it. Everything happens to us and we see too much of this world. We can't write this up. The most important things are the small vibrations of life - the things we can't draw. These are only feelings. And the feeling which I feel at 1:51 and later, watching the street with those afro-americans is also a thing that I can't draw. I could write more about it, but there'll be posts where this topic will be back again. It was just 5 minutes of contemplation before lying down.

The coolest parts:
- at 0:42 as he sings the second "father"
- at 1:35 as the first musical change starts after a cool "ooo"
- at 2:04 as he sings "Mother, mother": it's the way of singing that a non-afro-american can't do, I suppose
- at 3:53 and later as the music disappears, but the monotonic drum remains, creating a place for a deeper part... with fascinating video again
- at 8:24 as he sings "I wanna know, I wanna know...".

and on album: Marvin Gaye - What's going on
There's also a very cool version of it on the album: Quincy Jones - Smackwater Jack.

1 comment:

  1. Hiya! Just dropping by to thank you for your kind comment earlier. Really pleased I found your blog too - everything you have to write is so insightful! Keep it up :)

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