Ridiculous Opinions #248
UNFETTERED CREATIVITY AND THE PERFECT MUSIC VIDEO: AN ESSAY!
Most of you know this, but my ultimate goal in life is to be the most creative human being on the planet. And though I may not be the actual most creative human being on the planet, I would venture to say that I am up there, even though I toil in obscurity as a high school teacher. I make a lot of stuff. I am constantly doing things, and at the moment, I have a LOT of projects happening.
I’ve always been arrogant about myself and have approached life with a “I can do that, too!” mentality. There are very few things that you can send my way that make me think, “I could never do that!” The truth is that with a bit of time and effort, I probably could do that. I just choose not to.
Of course, life deals a few blows to you along the way. At the age of 51, there are physical things that I might have been able to accomplish in the past, but have no dream of doing at this point. Shooting a basketball well? I could have done that, but that time is past. Running a half-marathon? At one point, it was my plan. Now? It would probably be best to give that one a rest.
And there are, of course, things involving smarts in which I am just out of my league. I’m never going to play piano (even though I could have at another point in my life). I will never shred on the guitar. But those things are just a matter of time and effort that I don’t want to devote myself to. 51 isn’t old, but it’s old enough for me to sit back and say, “I really don’t want to spend my time doing that.”*
*Please note that this is also the attitude I have when it comes to being around people.
But sometimes I get jealous. When I see something that is purely creative, something that I know, deep in my heart, that I can’t do, there is a little twinge of envy in me that I can’t ignore. My general arrogance prevents this from happening very often, but occasionally, I see something that makes me think, Dammit! I could never do that!
This week, I saw something that made me jealous. And I have been watching it on a constant loop since then.
First, a bit of background…My personal opinion is that music videos are the purest form of art. They embody every aspect of being a creative person if done right.
Film-making skills! In order to make a great music video, you have to have them all: cinematography, sound, editing. If it involves film, you have to have the skills.
The song! There’s music, of course. You have to be a great musician with a great song to have a great music video.
The Fine Arts! You could look at the fine arts as well. In order to make a good music video, you have to be well-versed in composition and lighting. You have to have an artistic sense in order to tell a story in such a way.
Drama! There’s also acting. The camera can capture the essence of a human being. It’s inexplicable why it is able to do that, but it’s true. When you see a movie star up on screen and you have this strange feeling that you want to watch them up there, that’s what charisma is. A film camera is able to see things that we don’t even realize are there. It’s also able to see when those things we don’t realize are there are actually not there! (I’m looking at you, Timothee Chalemet).
Dance - And my favorite component of a good music video is dance. Good lord, that’s my biggest problem with being a jealous creative person. I can’t dance. And I have a great admiration for those who have that skill. To be able to move your body with control and thoughtfulness is a skill I’ve never had and I wish I did. In another life, I was a supremely skilled dancer and I have been punished in this life with not having that skill at all.
Shut up, Randall. Just get to the point.
The point is that I have been watching this all week:
I truly feel that this is an almost perfect work of art. And I feel that Donald Glover, alongside his creative partner, Hiro Murai, has to be one of the most creative human beings on the planet. Let me break this down for you, according to my prerequisites.
1. Film-making skills! Since the early-2010s, Donald Glover has been working with a filmmaker named Hiro Murai. They are a match made in heaven. Murai has made some of the greatest music videos ever produced, including this gem from Chet Faker:
Holy crap, that video is SO GOOD. Everything about it is incredible. But it doesn’t quite fulfill my PERFECT MUSIC VIDEO QUOTIENT. It’s missing several key elements.
Be that as it may, Murai has done some spectacular, under the radar work over the last decade, most of it involved with Donald Glover, and a lot of it on Glover’s incredible TV series, Atlanta.
Atlanta was a fully-charged TV series when it comes to creativity. That show did not care. It did absolutely whatever it wanted to do, whether it was having a character named Justin Bieber played by a black man, creating an utterly horrifying vision of a reclusive Michael Jackson, or letting Liam Neeson play a racist version of Liam Neeson.
Atlanta was three creative people working at their maximum potential (alongside Donald Glover’s brother, Stephen Glover). Occasionally, Hollywood makes the mistake of handing a wad of money over to people without paying attention to what they’re actually doing, leaving them to truly express themselves. And when they do, it’s GOLD. Barbie was an example of that. So was Atlanta. Bad examples of this are any of the Zack Snyder movies. Any of them.
The bottom line is that Murai, and subsequently Glover, are truly creative people who are not beholden to norms or rules. Season 3 of Atlanta started without any of the main characters and produced one of the most horrifying and beautiful episodes of television that I have ever seen (Three Slaps). And when I finished watching it, I was astonished at their bravery and utter creativity.
This video tells a story. It creates a world. And the surprise in the very middle of the video is just shockingly great. This is storytelling at its finest.
2. What about music? This song is genius. Is this a hit? Who knows? Is it infectious? Absolutely. Songwriting in this day and age is so bogged down with ambition. It seems like every songwriter is trying to get on the radio in some form or another and it produces something that is lacking in humanity. It either doesn’t come from the heart or it’s something that is rote and mechanical. Let me offer you an example of this by my favorite band, U2:
This is a band that used to be about something. They used to care about what they were doing. (An example of this would be shown in the new movie, Kiss the Future, which shows U2 at their most powerful in terms of actually being an example for current artists). But this song?
Soulless.
There’s nothing wrong with it (aside from the chorus stolen from Blondie’s Call Me, which they had to give songwriting credit for), but it’s by-the-numbers. It was made to promote their Las Vegas residency, where they played The Sphere to a bunch of super-rich older folks who were more wowed by the venue than the actual musicians.
But Glover? He has none of that. This song is a melodically genius tune. There are no filters here when it comes to what he wants to produce. It’s almost like a childrens’ song with a nifty guitar lick and fun words to sing.
Why would an artist not only write a song like this, but also release it as a single? Who cares? It’s great!
3. The Fine Arts. I present to you this shot alone:
Look at the lighting and composition of this shot. Everything about this is well-composed, from the silhouette of the man at the bar, to the chiaroscuro lighting on the guitarist’s face, to the light behind the guitarist. And it appears for about two seconds. Brilliant work.
4. The Acting. There are two things that stand out to me in this video (aside from Donald Glover’s performance). One is the cameo by Quinta Brunson, who appears at the beginning. The “contract negotiation” between them is utterly brilliant from an acting perspective. Pay attention to how fast those lines walk over each other and then pay attention to the way Brunson delivers her line off-screen. She’s so good.
The other brilliant part of this is the backup dancers, played here by Monyett Crump and Rob Bynes. In particular, pay attention to this point in the video:
I want you to watch the backup dancer on the right when Glover says, “How many of ya’ll done lost your pappy?” The guy on the right raises his hand, then is embarrassed to have done so. If you only watch this video once, you’d miss that. It’s far in the background and so incredibly subtle that very few would pay attention to it. But it’s brilliant.
If you watch these guys through the whole video, though, you’ll see not only some spectacular dancing, but dancing in character. It’s not enough to just look cool while you’re dancing…to be brilliant, you have to act. You have to be the part. These guys did it in spades.
5. The Dancing. Look, I don’t have a lot to say other than the choreography and dancing in this video are spectacular. Three men working in perfect synchronization with each other and with the camera. When I first saw the video and they started dancing, I was like, “Oh, crap! I’m going to love this!” I’ve always felt that the best dancers are those who understand that dancing is about stillness rather than movement. It’s about control. This moment:
If you watch the video at this particular moment, these guys freeze in this pose for the briefest of seconds, and to me, it’s awe-inspiring. To have that much control over your body, to be able to do that in a split-second and then continue, is shocking to me. And we take these kinds of things for granted. I don’t. Why? Because at the age of 51, if I were to try to do something like that, I would be in the hospital for weeks.
But this all comes back around to Donald Glover, the man at the center of it all. He did everything here. There is something about this man wanting to write this song, to tell this story, to make this video, that just screams unfettered creativity to me. I want to know what makes this man tick. I want to understand how and why he does the things that he does. But the best part about this is that I’ll never know.
He’s a mystery to me. What powers the guy? And how can I steal this power?
So yes…I am jealous of certain creative people, because I know that I will never be able to achieve at those levels. I will never be able to make something as brilliant as this. I’m not nearly as creative as I sometimes think I am.
But that’s okay.
Because the glorious part of existence is that, although I am not creating at this level, at the very least, I am able to bear witness to this kind of creativity.
This music video will more than likely fade into obscurity at some point. Life will change. Wars will happen. History will be forgotten. The shallow meaninglessness of what this was will be made irrelevant by time.
But I saw this. And my life was better because I did. I get a lot of flack from the people around me because I’m a hater. I dislike everything. I am uninterested.
But I’m like that because of things like this. I have seen brilliance. It’s right there.
I don’t have to like everything, I just have to like the right things.
See you next week…
