What do people think of this?

[Yair]

As the title says, I'm interested in opinions.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

I don't understand the langauge usd in the music.

The video aws well done. Like the the movie "Brazil", after viewing it multiple times I came away wondering "What was that all about?"

I liked the shadow of of the grim reaper with head on the skull (about 2:30 into it, using a shadow to fore-shadow) as well as the whale swimming bewteen alternating trees. If pressed I would have to say its the story of two friends that have taken two seperate paths. One to short term pleasure followed by enternal flight from a whale dispatched by an under-wear clad congregation. The other took the less pleasing path that ultimatly culminated in his death and resurection. The signifigance of the donkey still evades me. It was an asset in much of the journey but could not carry him the final miles, although it was there to great the resurected.

Now it is my turn!

What do the words say?

How did you find it?

What do you think?

"tag" you are it!

Ben

[Yair]

QUOTE (neB @ Jun 12 2008, 02:06 PM)

I liked the shadow of of the grim reaper with head on the skull (about 2:30 into it, using a shadow to fore-shadow) as well as the whale swimming bewteen alternating trees.Ben

These are my two favorite images as well. I want to give it a couple of days and see if anyone else has anything to add before commenting on the rest.

[Eugen Graf]

Amerikanisatiton !!! I see it in this movie.

Can be thistwo frends are Iran and Iraq ?

[Yair]

QUOTE (Eugen Graf @ Jun 12 2008, 10:00 PM)

Amerikanisatiton !!! I see it in this movie.

Can you explain what you mean?

[Eugen Graf]

QUOTE (Yen @ Jun 12 2008, 09:39 PM)

Can you explain what you mean?

Not really. But it's my impression.

It shouldn't be so, but I think two brothers Iran and Iraq have different fortunes and this story says about it. Peoples are amerikans who meet one of brother and he converts from one figure to other if he jumps into the hole.

In really the story may say some other, but I think my impression is no too false. It can be something like this.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Ben's comments remind me a couple of books I read, I don't know if it coud be related to religion or more globaly to spirituality but the wales (or sometimes daulphin) makes me think of something of that kind.

My understanding of this video is not clear in my own mind, at first it left me kind of sad and after wiewing it a couple of times I felt chilled out and - not faithfull but - hopefull.

I couldn't say why

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Its not French then?

Leviathan?

Its was involved in both scenarios but only one was pursued by it.

The scene were you can see that the one in the suit was the one that choose his card seems signifigant.

Ben

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Yair:

I finally had a chance to view it a few times while my son trashed the living room in a matter of minutes at home (no access from work).

Didn't look up the source nor the context, and I'm definitely not a film critic. Here are my observations and interpretations, not necessarily my beliefs or opinions.

Good imagery and foreshadowing, appealing music though I don't know the translation. At the end I interpolated "Shine my shoes, then I die, they are done"

Glowing temple or crypt transitioning to a street light illuminated, shade wearing, 4 fingered?, hawker (akin to Morpheus and Neo choosing between the red or the blue), control and choice is an illusion.

Suit goat guy initally reaches for the smaller card then takes bigger one instead.

Whale shapes in the clouds, water ripples in sky, bird shape in mountains transition to a bird flying. More whales between the trees (cool effect).

Donkey kicks off suit goat guy after he looks back possibly questioning his choice. Why does he taste the dirt?

X marks the spot? Not really, it is actually a cross. Looks like LAVA down there too

Suit goat guy dresses up for the final leap. Goat eyes are so cool.

Climbs back out of the hole as a small donkey with a shred of a tie on. Has lots to learn possibly, confirmed with a nod to the much larger donkey. Didn't Jesus ride on a Donkey?

The other goat guy, I have no idea. Goats are cool.

Some are blessed and some are cursed... (Rush- The Larger Bowl)

Thanks Yair, you sucked me in, at least not into the 5th Dimentia. :thumbup:

-AK2DM

[Gabi1]

hello Yair

refreshing song. thanks for sharing it.

the graphics are well tought and worked. interresting while sad and in a sense horrifying.

the lyrics are not self explanatory, and i am not sure it is good. connection to the pitures is vague.

need to hear and watch another few times beofre i decide if i like or not. the whole thing is very artistic of a Bjork kind, yet surrounded by such sadness it is difficult to enjoy.

please do expand on its origin ( singer?)

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Is anyone clear on the language of the song?

The guteral sound is what made me first think Frnch but if its not french then maybe its hebrew. When I double clciked on Yair's link the YuoTube page had hebrew replies (since (I think) hebrew occationally imbeds words within words I don't know enough to be able to use my hebrew-english lexicon). I had once read that all hebrew music was written in a minor key (is that an over generalization?) so this music passes that test.

SO now I want to think this is a story of Isreal.

The swimmer represent those that choose the remain in the diaspora and the suit goat represents those that returned. The pursuit by the whale repesnts the persecution by the christian ( water is used to symbolize baptism) (trying to live according to Mosaic law in christian countries).

The card sharkster was that counsel by the allies after WWII that decide they would create Isreal. (Side observations: Most cartoons hands are rendered such that they have only four finger (three plus thumb) the goat guys have five. ???)

The mule was the US and Great Britain who encouraged the creation of Isreal and fostered the migration. The mule did not aide in the final work and the suit goat had to do it alone.

After making the leap into nationhood and then passing by fire (military action) the emerged as a small country. The end scene where the goat and the mule look at each other sorta says "So now what?"

Am I getting any closer?

[Gabi1]

QUOTE (neB @ Jun 15 2008, 03:50 PM)

Is anyone clear on the language of the song?

The guteral sound is what made me first think Frnch but if its not french then maybe its hebrew. When I double clciked on Yair's link the YuoTube page had hebrew replies (since (I think) hebrew occationally imbeds words within words I don't know enough to be able to use my hebrew-english lexicon). I had once read that all hebrew music was written in a minor key (is that an over generalization?) so this music passes that test.

Hem Hem.... French being gutural? i dont want to get out of the subject here, but, again: French is gutural?? Spanish maybe, German definitely, but French?

nono, your other guess is better.

[crelf]

QUOTE (Gabi1 @ Jun 15 2008, 10:51 AM)

French is gutural?? Spanish maybe, German definitely, but French?

I agree that French sometimes sounds a little gutural eg: "du rien" - the "r" often sounds like it's way in the back of the thoat.

I think Ben really meant "gutural" (throaty), not "guteral" (from the gutter)

[Yair]

I'll give people time until tomorrow if they want to add their thoughts. Then I'll provide the details. In the meantime, I created this thread to see if other people might also wish to post content like this.

QUOTE (neB @ Jun 15 2008, 04:50 PM)

I had once read that all hebrew music was written in a minor key (is that an over generalization?) so this music passes that test.

You can hear that? If so, you've got a much better ear than I do (and I do play a bit).

[crelf]

QUOTE (Yen @ Jun 15 2008, 01:19 PM)

You can hear that?

Yep - it's definately minor. My Rhodes MK-80 confirms it as D_min with lots of 4ths and 5ths (typical) - the cool thing is the use of 5^sus (in this case, A^sus to A) - one of my favorite predictable lead-in transitions (commonly referred to as a "plagal cadence")...

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE (Yen @ Jun 15 2008, 01:19 PM)

...You can hear that? If so, you've got a much better ear than I do (and I do play a bit).

No I can't hear it but I seem to be able to sense it somehow. In my "other life" I am surronded by musicians and find myself often bombarded with talk of diminished 7th and pentatonic scales. It is usually about that time that I wonder off into the other room and check the forums because before long they start playing the game of "Lets turn the music way up and start yelling at each other."

But back to the topic.

I have given more thought to the four vs five finger rendering and am inclined to believe the artist wanted to give the goat guy a greater humanlike nature (hands are supposed to by one of the harder parts to draw).

Why would you think goats were chosen to represent the the protagonist?

I am curious what you have to say about this Q since goats were used in many interesting passages of scripture. Daniel's "goat with two horns" and one of the apostles wrote of "seperating the goats from the sheep". In the culture I grew up this often taken as seperating the bad (goats) from the good (sheep). But the rebel in me makes me question that meaning. I thought the goats were often kept along with sheep because the sheep were dumb and would follow each other off a cliff, while having a goat around the sheep would follow the goat. So I wonder if that passage really is intended to reference those that blindly follow the masses vs those that question the action of the mob.

The card sharkster appers to have morphed into the donkey between scenes, they could be one and the same.

OK, that is my last series of comments and observations before you pull back the curtain.

Ben

[Yair]

Well, I'll have to admit you caught me off guard. I posted it because I liked it, but I wasn't planning on having to explain it. As the title says, I was just wondering what people who couldn't even understand the lyrics thought of it.

I'll try to cover everything brought up in the thread, but I won't necessarily go into details.

I found this like everything else on the net - through a link. In this case, it was probably through one of the music review sites I occasionally check out. The band (which I knew before) is called "Bein HaShmashot" (literally "at dusk", but it has too much context to be easily translatable) and the song is called "Badmama" (in the silence).

In general, I don't think that the interpetations brought up in this thread are invalid. Once something was created, it can have different meanings to different people and that's legitimate. Some of the points mentioned here are exactly the same as what the author had in mind while others are far from it.

After the questions here, I had to do some research to understand the meaning of this. Personally, I usually don't much care about the meanings of lyrics and videos - I'm in it mostly for the music and I often know lyrics by heart without thinking at all about what they actually mean. In this case, as Gabi pointed out, the lyrics are very much not self explanatory. After some research, I eventually emailed the guy who created the video and asked him about it. He was happy to hear about this and gave a short answer, which I'll paraphrase here, along with some of the stuff I knew previously and stuff I found in my research.

The lyrics

I won't attempt to translate the lyrics (unless people really want me to), but here's a primer:

The lyrics are based on another poem (which I didn't know). That poem talks about how the poet goes to the desert every century and buries thousands of organs (limbs, eyes, mouths) he grew over the years and comes out with the standard number of each. At this point, he looks strange to others and so to himself and he starts growing them again and the cycle goes on.

The basic point in the original song is that you become false over time. You lie to people, treat different people differently, etc. The guy who wrote the poem really does go to the desert to meditate and "clean up". This song is based on that poem.

For example, a rough translation of the chorus is:

"In the silence,

among the thousands of things which didn't seek out their identity.

There we will return to our image".

The video

The video is actually an edited version of a video the animator (a guy named Yoni Salmon, who I don't know personally) created as his graduation project from the design school he went to.

The original video has a different sequence and has some first person narration explaining it better. The video is based on the following text from Leviticus (16:9):

QUOTE

And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

Essentially, you have two goats, one which is sacrificed and the other which is sent to the desert to atone for the sins of the people. As a side point, the actual word used is "Azazel" which some people consider to be a demon and others consider to be a cliff the goat is thrown off, so score -1 for Ben regarding the goat not falling off the cliff . As another side point, the word "Azazel" is used in Hebrew to this very day as "hell". As a third side point, you now know the source of the term "scapegoat".

The video deals with choice and responsibility. After the suited goat picks the bad lot, he decides to accept his fate and go to the desert. In the original video, he only gets to the desert at the end, after the other stuff happens to him, and it looks like all of the other stuff is supposed to make it harder for him. The whale represents the forces of chaos and destruction in the process. One example I can think of is the story of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale after choosing not to do what he was ordered to do (although the original text actually only says "large fish").

Apparently, the female donkey (like Balaam's ######) represents femininity and animism - it can talk but chooses not to, as opposed to the goat, which is "human".

In the end, the goat decides to face his fate and is reborn, in line with what is said in the original poem.

Like I said, the edited video which appears with the song doesn't reflect all that too well.

I hope the explanation is satisfactory. As mentioned, I wasn't planning on having to explain it.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE (Yen @ Jun 16 2008, 02:33 PM)

...

so score -1 for Ben regarding the goat not falling off the cliff .

...

And I had to work to get a score that low!

Thanks for the replies!

Ben