Out Of The Blue Inspiration

I went to my family home for the weekend and when I walked into the living room to say hi to my family and drop my heavy bags off my brother was watching the music channel, some songs that I'd never seen the video to were playing and the graphics and lyrics caught my attention. The songs were Jeremy by Pearl Jam and Move, Shake, Hide by Marmozets.

I began by watching Jeremy on Youtube and made quick notes and took screen shots throughout followed by a summed up paragraph of what I thought the song/video was about due to what I'd seen and heard.

Quick notes and screen shots:

-Young boy painting, paintings looked rushed and childlike. Reminds me of OCD painting therapy.

- Boy interacts with painting of a wolf and images of what seem to be people-less clothes hanging in the trees.

-Boy seems to be getting bullied by everyone in school, they're all pointing and laughing at him. He looks the same as them but still different. He wears the same clothes as the rest of the school kids but they still point and laugh at him.

-Boy seems to be shouting at what looks like his parents or someone with authority. It's strange. It's as though he's angry at them for some reason. The mother figure looks to be telling the father off just like the boy does. The father's hand gesture implies that he's saying ''It's not my fault", "I don't know" or "It's not my responsibility". 

-In the background on chalkboard it says "Anxiety Disorders", "Environmental Stress" and "Hereditary Factors".

Whilst watching this music video I was following a story in my mind from what I thought the video was about. I saw a young boy named Jeremy who was angry, trapped and different to everyone else. He ran away and released his frustration by drawing and painting. He interacted with images of a wolf with it's mouth open like it was roaring with rage, this wolf symbolized the boy and his feelings, he was a raging wolf inside. The clip shown above of the classroom, the teacher and the chalkboard caught my attention, it was only on screen for about 5 seconds but I was scanning the whole image on each clip for clues as to what the video was about. What I got from this clip was that the words "Anxiety Disorders", "Environmental Stress" and "Hereditary Factors"on the chalkboard were something to keep in mind because they're so clearly presented, it was obvious the viewer was supposed to pick up on these. One of the clips showed the class pointing and laughing at Jeremy, to me this suggested he was being bullied for something, all of the attention seemed to be on him for some reason. At the end of the video Jeremy walks into the classroom with confidence, he's wearing no shirt, when previously he was shown wearing the same as the other students, this suggested to me that he had 'escaped' them, he was no longer one of them, he had got out of what he once was involved in. The end proved to be shocking when it seemed as though Jeremy killed himself in front of the whole class, it was at this point when I thought the words "Anxiety Disorders", "Environmental Stress" and "Hereditary Factors" that were earlier shown on the chalkboard were describing the reasons of why he would end up killing himself. 

I then researched the real meaning to the video to see if it had any similarities to what I thought had been portrayed when I watched it. I found an article written by Jessica Letkemann on January 7th 2011 called 'Jeremy Spoke In Class Today' from the website http://www.twofeetthick.com/2011/01/jeremy-spoke-in-class-today/

Different parts of this video influenced me in different ways. At the start of the video when the young boy is painting in the woods his quick, angry, child like style of painting reminded me of a video I'd previously watched on youtube about OCD art therapy, I've since looked for this video but can't locate it. The video was about a young woman who suffered from OCD and one day a lady visited her, I'm assuming this lady was a support worker or nurse because she introduced the OCD sufferer to OCD art therapy, she asked the OCD lady to make her hand messy and paint, the OCD sufferer was reluctant at first but once she faced her fears and produced a big brown, unrecognisable blog on some A3 paper she felt better about getting dirty. The thing that interested me about her painting was the stages it followed, she added more colours, shapes and patterns each time and each time it got dirtier looking. Some stages of the painting I found myself recognising objects and making stories up in my head but it ended in a plain, dull, one toned mess. I will experiment with paints in conjunction to OCD and germs.

Another part of the video that caught my attention was the evil glare that the singer had on his face every time he showed up on screen, it gave me the idea to ask OCD sufferers what OCD would look like if it was a person because even though I don't suffer from it myself and I can only imagine, I would say OCD was an evil, demonic looking person. I'm interested to see what OCD sufferers say.

Move Shake Hide is a song by UK based band Marmozets. The video is chaotic, crazy, rave like, and loud. What interested me about this music video was that throughout it the band are jumping around, crazily dancing all around an empty room and it got me thinking that in terms of my project the people could symbolise OCD and how it constantly bounces around a sufferers mind which in this case happens to be represented by an empty, dark painted room. I'm not suggesting this was the intention of the video, I'm saying that that was the idea that I got after watching it. Another element that I could link to was the use of UV paint.

UV paint flashes upon the faces of certain band members in a rave like fashion, it reminded me of the earlier work I did with UV paint and has inspired me to pick it up again and experiment with UV paint and lighting with people as opposed to just objects.