Lisa Gerrard just released a new album, Twilight Kingdom, which you can stream for free on her site right now. Gerrard was one half of the duo Dead Can Dance (and this website is named after one of their songs). There’s a video that was produced for a song off of her new album called, “Seven Seas”. The song is ambient, haunting and sorrowful and the video really maximizes the effect…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vG1RInXX4Y?rel=0]
The scene opens up, a black and white view of the sky, we see waves on the ocean and birds flying in slow motion. Then, about 30 seconds in, the perspective pulls back to a view of the shoreline, in the center of the frame stands a scarecrow. There’s something about this imagery that is equal parts devastating and beautiful. The scarecrow feels like a mournful sentinel, keeping watch on the dying oceans. Removed from the fields, this figure becomes the watcher, the observer that stands in for our species’ absent conscience. If humans won’t bear witness to the culmination of their destructive nature, the scarecrow will stand in our stead. Immediately, I imagined an entire coastline filled with them. One every mile for all 1350 miles of Florida coastline.
At the end of the song, we see an image of a dead bird in the surf, reminiscent of the dead birds that photographer Chris Jordan found decomposed, their innards littered with plastic that they had consumed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
