The Dog Days Are Over- Digital Essay

This is my digital essay, based on Florence + The Machine’s “The Dog Days Are Over”.

My process:

My final essay was focused on the psychological phenomenon of “Fear of Success”. I wanted to play with the ideas of “damsels in distress”, the underdogs, and the oppressed heroine. I compiled a video of classic movies that agree with this theme–Easy A, Cinderella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Pretty in Pink, Funny Face, The Princess Diaries, and Alice in Wonderland (the 2010 Tim Burton film)– and all these movies were set up in accordance with the lyrics of “The Dog Days Are Over”. I think it worked well because it was a “retrospective” of my life– the triumph after opression (well, not that I have been opressed, but I’ve felt like a dorky Mia Thermopolis at times). At the end, I put the clip of Easy A because I felt like that was my voice and my wishes for the future.

The End.

“The Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine is classified as “Baroque Pop”. Baroque is usually said in reference to an unusually shaped, discolored, yet beautifully veiny pearl– basically a misunderstood gem. In this spirit, the goal of my digital project is to encompass this sense of heartbreaking, ugly beauty that Florence Welch often tries to promote. The actual music video for the song is of Florence dressed in strange red rectangular eye makeup and white allover body-paint, wearing various mullet-hemmed and tiered dresses. It is clear that all normality has fallen to the wayside in the production of this song, and I intend to capture that essence.

My personal interpretation of the song’s lyrics are a bit biased, but that is what I intend to base my paper on– my own opinions of the piece as a sort of conjuction with my self-journey, which I think has it’s own heartbreaking, ugly moments, but is in essence beautiful, as all life journies are.

My video will be composed firstly of a mix of pictures and video, alternating between the two with the quarter beats that the harp plays at first– images of someone running down: a subway track, a path at Central park, the woods in Prospect Park. Bubbles coming out and going back into a bubble blowing wand, and dirty water draining in a kitchen sink. I plan to literally interpret the lyrics, but choose various locations around New York City that I think fit the description. Since the song depicts someone who is trying to escape happiness, I want to end on a possibly happy note– the images and videos will get lighter and lighter as the video goes on.

It’s really hard to explain what I’ll do step-by-step, but I have confidence that I’ll be able to figure things out.

If I told him. If I told him. If I told him, dictator and despot, if I told him. Him if I told. What would happen if I told him. Would he run? Would he run if I told him? Would he stay if he stayed if I told him if he stayed would I tell him would he wouldn’t he or would he ever? Cacophony is cacophonous. Is Gertrude Stein is she cacophonous is she if she were to be cacophonous would I listen if she were? Would he? Would he listen to me if I were cacophonous if his brains were tangled from the sounds of repetition would he listen? Would he plug his ears or would he listen? Would anyone listen if we told them would they?

Would people listen to Gertrude if she followed the rules? Would they listen if she did? Is breaking the rules making the rules? Simple and elegant. Simple is elegant and clean is clear as clear is clean and we are all together to see how they run see how the run she how they fly.

I could not hear Gertrude’s voice in my head until now. Until I heard those videos I hadn’t heard it. But something about the way she breaks all the rules the English language puts out makes me love her writing. She basically put a big “F**K YOU!” in the face of anyone who is a grammar nitpicker, English lover, and technicality-obsessed intellectual. Gertrude Stein’s writing is, in a way, playful and fun– a reminder that rules should be broken. Obviously, who wouldn’t love that idea?

How do we know when we’re doing the right thing? Are we supposed to listen to what our parents tell us? My brain says yes, and then I think with that little cynical voice in my head “But what if they’re wrong?” What if? I think I know what if they’re wrong: a lifetime of rebellious attitude and “Go to your rooms”, which is quite familiar to me. I wonder how we, the next generation, are supposed to conduct our lives. In pursuit of truth? Or in accordance with long-standing postulates? Something tells me the answer is not so simple. Another life-long search. Awesome!

Seeing beyond pink-tinged glass

makes my eyes water

drops of happiness

and none of pain

Once I lived behind thick walls

that I built in earnest

my eyes cast downward

resolutely at the floor

desperately, to avoid any color

Seeing was not

really seeing to me.

It was only what I allowed myself to see

what my brain would allow.

And now the walls have crashed down.

I’m cold; there’s wind in my face

tears in my eyes

droplets of calm

after the storm.

I see the future

better than now

where my eyes do not hurt.

The weather is beautiful today. To me, this is the best kind of weather. Don’t judge, but I love when it starts to get chilly and you can wear your Abba‘s old sweater layered over a summer dress and get away with it. Yes, I wear my dad’s sweater. It kind of makes me wish I weren’t sitting at home, writing a paper. Or at least, sitting at home. It’s a Central Park day, for sure. Although something tells me I wouldn’t get any homework done except maybe if my homework involved drinking hot apple cider from Starbucks and spotting the cute boys going for a run in the park.

Also, this is going to sound kind of lame, but I love the sound of wind in the trees, especially when the leaves turn red. I know, it’s pretty corny of me. But I’m a reader and writer at heart, and we tend to get a little sappy, especially when nice weather like this surfaces after three days of flooding and intermittent frizzy hair weather. I mean, really- what kid didn’t run around stomping on the crunchy, shriveled up leaves come fall? I still do it. Anyone else? Anyone?

When Harry Met Sally (always a classic)

Tell me that didn’t give you a sudden urge to jump on the nearest train and take it all the way to 59th street, 5th avenue.

Well, the weather may be nice, but I don’t suppose one of you wants to do my homework, do you? No, I didn’t think so. I should be getting back to the 2005 merger between Sprint and Nextel. Or maybe I’ll forgo that for some apple cider, care of my kitchen refrigerator…

Oh, and one last note:

Autumn in New York – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

It doesn’t really get more magnificent than Ella and Louis, does it?

So as I’m sitting and avoiding my homework, I happen to be listening/ watching this video by Florence and The Machine. The lyrics are weird and cryptic, which suits her because Florence Welch is also pretty weird and cryptic. (see proof below)

Here’s some of the lyrics which made me make a confused face at my computer screen:

Happiness, hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her, stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with a drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

This is kind of weird ’cause it makes me think that Florence says happiness is like getting hit by a train, and “she” (whoever this mysterious depressed girl is) is running away from happiness. So what’s up with this girl?

Freud says:

We have decided to consider pleasure and ‘ pain’ in relation to the quantity of excitation present in the psychic life—and not confined in any way—along such lines that ‘ pain’ corresponds with an increase and pleasure with a decrease in this quantity.

I don’t pretend to understand Freud, but I’ll just assume he’s saying “yo, whatever makes you the most excited about life is considered pain”. This seems sort of skewed. But maybe he’s talking about the same girl Florence and The Machine was singing about, someone who runs from happiness. Truth is, Freud always struck me as sort of a weird guy. So maybe he’s talking about people who take pleasure in pain. But then does that make it pain, or pleasure because you enjoy it? Just wondering…