The universe is a big, complicated place, life is rarely as straight forward as you’d expect, and if we were ever to tear the veil between the realms of the living and the dead, Halloween 2020 seems like a fairly likely time for it. Rather than pulling out the plot from Ghostbusters II, DenMother has released a video for “Is It Greener?” which suggests that life, instead, is cyclical, repeatable, and full of lesson.
“The idea of the song is mainly connecting (and reconnecting) with people over multiple lives and even though you may lose each other in one life, you’ll meet each other again in the next,” says Sabarah Pilon, AKA Fredericton-based electronic artist DenMother.
The lyrics of “Is It Greener?” paint a story of renewal. It’s not the ever-fresh image of springtime coming into bloom, but a painful reminder that whatever we’re experienced, for better or worse, is something that we’re meant to experience.
“I fell today into the pattern of the past,
I forgot that I told myself that I’d stop doing that,
So I drain you from my fingertips like wax,
And I close my eyes in a deaf silence I sat,
And I have walked by our timelines for a thousand lives,
And each one they have ended in our demise,
And in each I’ve reminded you that I’m here,
But this time I’ll try to see it from your side ,
And you are here to teach me all about,
Being all alone”
Pilon describes the darky and moody video, produced and directed by Jordan Anthony Greer, as playing with “the intricate layers of loss woven across timelines. Grief feels less permanent within a limitless universe.”
Shot at the living history museum of Kings Landing, the video gets treated to an eerie Victorian quality, rocking back and forth across life and death… which, as Pilon describes it, might seem almost like a non-event.
“The video idea that Jordan came up with, to me, fit exactly what I was trying to convey: that death is bittersweet and ultimately, impermanent,” says Pilon.
“The King’s Landing location was just an amazing added bonus and shooting it there added to the idea of timelessness, because in some parts it seems like I don’t ‘belong’ in that time. So it was almost like an additional character! It was really special to shoot there!”
“Is It Greener?” appeared on DenMother’s album, Then Now Forever, which was released in early 2020, although Pilon does ominously suggest that the song will be included as part of the album’s Alternate Timelines Edition.