There’s a certain beauty that can only come out of melancholy.
I used to be very tuned into this. It got to the point where my friends would shove “happy” music on me because there was NO way I wasn’t depressed.
I wasn’t.
There’s a certain beauty that can only come out of melancholy.
So here we have Radiohead, my favorite band since High School, who’s beautiful songs helped form my creative being, paired with Paul Thomas Anderson, my favorite director since High School, who’s risk-taking artistry and subtle subversion helped form my own visual language. Put them together and what we have now is something that I’ve never seen before.
Thom Yorke, normally a rock god who reigns behind a shroud of weirdness and mystery, is just a regular Joe. Walking through the hyper-real blue sunlight, beating in through the desaturated rooms he passes through. Several people walking behind him at first, defocused in the background, looking like alien silhouettes. Smiling uncontrollably as he walks, unnoticed, through a laundromat. Making his way up stairs, through hospital hallways. Does he know these people? Or is he just a spectator? A fellow dreamer? Until he finally makes it to the solitary orange glow of a campfire and imparts some wisdom on us that we, of course, can’t understand. All alone. Finally.
After watching the video several times, I went out to get a coffee. I pulled up the song on my Spotify, and suddenly the video took on new meaning. I was a spectator. I was Thom Yorke. With my headphones on, walking down the street, people passing, not reacting, just living. People living all around me. And the light just so happens to match the video perfectly today. And the rain puts you in the exact right mood to listen to this beautiful, moving song.
If you live in NYC and you have a minute today, listen to the song outside in the rain. Walk along and feel like Thom Yorke for a minute. Feel that melancholy. Hear the beauty that it unlocks.