The man in the car is the father–look at the name on his radio!–the boy is either the man’s past self or his son, and the girl is…well, a girl. It seems the video is a cross between unspoken family history and the boy’s dream. The boy–who was probably already a man when the dream occurred–appears to be working through some relationship issue he has with the father, and with the girl.

The father takes the son on a picnic in the forest, but instead of food, there is an old radio to eat. The father’s music wraps around the son, and the father is happy, maybe proud, maybe even obsessed with the fact that his music is “changing” his son. But things spin out of control and the boy becomes something monstrous, something unrecognizable, and only the girl realizes that this monstrosity has devoured the boy.

The father, the beast, and the girl all have menacing qualities. The father watches passively, as if from the past, while his son suffers; the girl wields a “dark blade,” and the beast is, you know, a beast. But they are also all somehow familiar, or at least not total enemies.

So she allows the beast–who is dressed like the father–to also devour her, after which she cuts her way into its body/history (notice the bits of memory and trash within the monster’s body–a metaphor for personal history), retrieving the boy by making an incision, a wound, at the beast’s heart.

It is a great metaphor for modern love: the video ends with them all running: girl and boy in front, followed closely by the monster (who does not die, even though he has been mortally wounded), and, behind them, the father whose music is the source of BOTH destruction in the past and hope in the future (toward which they are running).

So we never leave our monsters behind, but maybe a girl can help us get a little distance in front of it? Maybe she is the one who is unafraid enough to engage our monstrous qualities in search of something more innocent? Or, the father’s “music” is both poison and remedy, causing the very suffering that will allow us to create the stories that redeem him? OR: monsters rock!

i did not write this… my brother did. but i feel it just fine.