The song, „El Topo“, is partially inspired by the films of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Danya Vodovoz used Jodorowsky’s film „El Topo“, for the name of the song, since he could imagine his music as an imaginary soundtrack of this nearly forgotten masterpiece. The unusual structure and rhythm of the track were developed by jamming to a vinyl record playing the rhythmic noise of the lead out groove, in combination with an old guitar loop from an eight-track tape recorder. This all happened spontaneously after a night of partying at Danya’s studio. Director’s note (Juan Garnica): „The story takes on many roles and it is intended to not be understood easily. In the video, we wanted to show a little bit of irony that a rather newer-looking vehicle would break down in the middle of nowhere. As she begins walking, she finds a pair of reading glasses. The glasses symbolize that she needs to clearly see what lies ahead of her and she needs to see the reason why she’s in the middle of nowhere for no specific reason. She sees a man holding the same pair of reading glasses nodding his head as if to say, “Yes, you are seeing me.” She continues walking and finds a plastic horse, the horse symbolizes her mobility through the desert. As she continues hiking, she finds a book, and open it to the poem that tells her that she’s been home all along.
About this video: Christopher Hunt is a London based writer and video director, with an interest in semiotics, symbolism, surrealism, graphics, and photography. It was for this reason that he was compelled to write, direct and shoot „Flourished“ in collaboration with German-based music producer Danya Vodovoz. The use of VR (virtual reality) is similar to a lucid dream where a person can be immersed into a world of unreality, meanwhile believing that it is true. It was a converging of these two ideas that Christopher wanted within the script and to find ways of exploiting them visually. Interestingly, while most people report dreaming in color, there is a small percentage of people who claim to only dream in black and white. So to produce „Flourished“ in black and white was an alternative away from normality. Dreams are apparently, an accumulation of things we experience during the day as stored information. However, we can also benefit from dreaming because it acts as a filter for defining reality. Ideas can flow from the process of what happens after sleeping because the subconscious is in the background processing the data and filtering the rubbish from the good. That is why people are known to say „let me sleep on it“. We are unique because we can live what we conjure up from our thoughts or ideas that have been processed during sleep, although we may not remember what we dreamt most of the time. „Flourished“ is about the positive way we manifest our ideas, thoughts, dreams, desire, and things we may have on our minds and finally bring them to life the next day. The work was the inspiration of Russian filmmaker, Tarkovsky, and shot in black and white with elements of dark and light scenes because he knew how to captivate the viewer. Also, the aim was to have more than just a meaningless music video, and the idea to overlay Shakespeare quotes on selected imagery helped to encapsulate meaning. The more you look when you replay the video, the more meaning one might find. For example, the flowers on the table at the beginning of the scene, the leaves blowing in the wind, the actress entrapped in budding flowers, and her struggle to touch reality encased in a virtual world. Our brain is very capable of reading between the lines, and this is probably the reason why we can construct preconceived ideas and ignore the truth. Knowing this fact helps to exploit many possibilities in the video. It is not until further analysis and evaluation over time that we can find the truth. Combining all these elements in the video is a culmination of synchronization, movement, and emotion.
Credit goes to the Actress Giulia Cipriani, who put her soul into each scene, down to shedding tears on cue, and Emelia Millar, age 5, in her first role.
The next script in Christopher’s research is a video to promote the products of London hi-fi designer Nic Poulson of Trilogy Audio. It will be another collaboration with Danya and probably very surreal.
