2014-11-30 Video Dark and Messy
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It's no secret that my desire to create music came hand-in-hand with my desire to make music videos. In fact, for most songs I've been part of creating, I have at least little ideas for videos. As soon as possible, once there were songs, a video had to happen.
It's also no secret that I don't generally talk about what the lyrics mean (or, rather, what they were about to me when I wrote them, what inspired them). However, I'm starting to realise that I have to loosen up a bit on my massive privacy desires, at least when it comes to the meaning of the songs. And especially if I'm going to talk about the concept behind the Bruise Me video, which I feel like I need to do if I'm going to make sure my message is clear. A little opening up here, and a little more to come after the CD is released.
Bruise Me was one of the first songs for which I wrote lyrics and was actually the first song we completed. That isn't why it was the first video, but I do like that it came together that way. And I'm really glad to see that so many of you like it. Someone even turned it into gifs, which is how you know you've made it.
The first image I had for this video was a beaten down woman with a band of bruises on her neck. And it's fortunate that I love bruise colours because I knew almost immediately that the whole video had to feel like a bruise. That meant bruise colours in darkness and messiness, because abuse is always dark and messy. Always. I wanted to keep it non-realistic, because I felt like realistic bruises would make it too easy for people to think about just physical abuse.
There's increasing messiness in the video because abuse doesn't often start as a full-on assault. It's just a little splash. And no matter how you try to keep some part of your life clean from the abuse, it will get on everything. Even if you think you've got something untouched. You might not even realise what's going on...you might just feel unfocused or worn, but abusers can be great at making you think that what's happening is Not Abuse. You find yourself knocked down and covered in a mess until something--and maybe it's an escalation you can't deny or, hopefully, it's someone who cares speaking up--makes it undeniable.
But I also needed to show glimmers of hope. That you can take back the shine that was pummelled out of you. That the shiny stuff might be splashed with the mess, but that doesn't mean the shine is entirely gone. That you aren't condemned to stay on your knees. If you dig deep, there's hope that you'll find a way to stand. You might even dance again. It might not be instant healing, but you can stand; you can shine. Even if it's a messy anger that initially pulls you out.
If you're reading this, I'm just going to hopefully assume that you know better than to be an abuser (and that includes all the kinds of abuse). However, I'm not going to be so naive as to assume that none of you are being abused. And, no matter what the kind of abuse, it's not okay. If you can't find what you need in yourself to stand up, if you don't have friends or family to help you stand up and reclaim your shine, there are resources that can help. Please, please...you're online now. Take a quick moment to reach out to someone for help. That's much more important than reading about this video.
Be kind to each other. Be kind to yourself.
As always, I'm here to hear your thoughts and requests. Drop me an email, lovely.
xxx
Amber
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