Headlights
Music Video, Poem 2014
Where We Bend and Bow, Rye Pines, Portrait of Dissonance as a Young Man
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The Amber Light
The amber light turns people stranger.
Come night, they clang against each other.
Statues on every bus.
Headphones whisper in the soft dark.
Brass faces that seem to stare,
memorizing the rhythm of silver signs and amber branches,
black houses with blue eyes.
Their windows look to the freeway
that lights the sky
the color of pavement stained purple.
Their cheeks tap the glass.
The bus breathes for them.
The light doesn’t know where they go.
It only knows what time it is.
Come morning it will sit dim in its cage.
But for now,
its flicking distance across their foreheads,
gilding them in glass sunlight.
It drops coins into the well of each eye.
Headlights is a music video accompanied by a poem. The project is about commuting in the dark and the way public space affects private life.
I wrote the poem "The Amber Light" thinking about the night's substitute sunlight. I came to believe that light is a state of mind. I elaborated on this subject in a music video for Rye Pines. Where We Bend and Bow is a collaboration with the lyricist Ted Maguire.
At night, the street's visual language is intensified. I wanted to recreate this urgency in the editing. I used an animated approach, creating loops from very short clips.
This imagery correlates with Maguire's lyrics that personify cigarette smoke. Examining the night shift, I discovered a neon authority and morbid symbolism in the lights and street signs. Headlights is a two part story presented in different mediums.