Everyone you know goes away in the end
The last installment of our, frankly, fantastic music video countdown goes up today. I've got some more blurbs in it, including our #1 video, Unkle's "Rabbit In Your Headlights". I've got a couple more scattered in the other parts (links at the bottom of the article page), but that's not what I want to talk about here.
I ranked the Unkle video above Johnny Cash's "Hurt", but I wonder now whether that was just a failure of nerve. It'd be wrong to downplay any ounce of the a/effectiveness of "Rabbit In Your Headlights" but whenever I pop in the "Hurt"/"Personal Jesus" single to watch the video my vision starts going fuzzy from the sheer emotion of it all circa the first real clips of a younger Johnny. By the end of the song some part of me wants to collapse sobbing to the ground, but I know why I don't, or can't.
We can all only hope we live as long, or as well, as Johnny Cash did; but if we do, or if we don't, ultimately all we are left with is memories. I've said before that one of the bravest, finest, most beautiful things art can do is help us deal with that fact, not by hiding it but by confronting us with it, and the "Hurt" video (not yet made when I was writing about "Nightswimming") is maybe the perfect example. I don't really get the sense that Cash regrets much, or even feels that bad about the fact that his life and the life of his beloved wife are coming to an end. It happens. There's nothing you can do. Occasionally the blunt fact of that reaches out to all of us, no matter how young, and leaves your mind reeling and a pain so deep in your chest you'd think it would never end. The essential cry of the human, presented with the facts of the world, is "this is unfair!"
And then you wake up the next morning and things continue to happen, as they always will, and you move on. And maybe, hopefully, a little of that ache stays with you. You can let it crush you and waste your life, or you can let it render the sheer miracle of existence so sweet that you want to dance everywhere and hug everyone you meet. Johnny Cash, and Mark Romanek, understand that.
I ranked the Unkle video above Johnny Cash's "Hurt", but I wonder now whether that was just a failure of nerve. It'd be wrong to downplay any ounce of the a/effectiveness of "Rabbit In Your Headlights" but whenever I pop in the "Hurt"/"Personal Jesus" single to watch the video my vision starts going fuzzy from the sheer emotion of it all circa the first real clips of a younger Johnny. By the end of the song some part of me wants to collapse sobbing to the ground, but I know why I don't, or can't.
We can all only hope we live as long, or as well, as Johnny Cash did; but if we do, or if we don't, ultimately all we are left with is memories. I've said before that one of the bravest, finest, most beautiful things art can do is help us deal with that fact, not by hiding it but by confronting us with it, and the "Hurt" video (not yet made when I was writing about "Nightswimming") is maybe the perfect example. I don't really get the sense that Cash regrets much, or even feels that bad about the fact that his life and the life of his beloved wife are coming to an end. It happens. There's nothing you can do. Occasionally the blunt fact of that reaches out to all of us, no matter how young, and leaves your mind reeling and a pain so deep in your chest you'd think it would never end. The essential cry of the human, presented with the facts of the world, is "this is unfair!"
And then you wake up the next morning and things continue to happen, as they always will, and you move on. And maybe, hopefully, a little of that ache stays with you. You can let it crush you and waste your life, or you can let it render the sheer miracle of existence so sweet that you want to dance everywhere and hug everyone you meet. Johnny Cash, and Mark Romanek, understand that.
