There is so much I love about the new Something ‘Bout Love music video.  The first two videos he did for Crush and ALTNOY were fine, but they didn’t move me.  This video does.  It expands my heart.  It has depth and meaning and subtle messages to intrigue and make one ponder and wonder.  In a world of videos that are shallow, empty, and heartless, I just find that altogether wonderful.

The video begins with the camera taking in just his shoes as he strolls a sidewalk littered with crushed petals.

We are invited to walk in his shoes, to understand a little more of who he really is inside.  The next moment reveals a full-on face shot and it’s not the smiling face to which we have become so accustomed.  It is the face of a man who is intensely engaged in a purpose.  The stride is confident and relaxed but very deliberate.  It is as though David is saying right from the start…“I will be taken seriously as an artist and I am not all rainbows and sunshine.  Deal with it.”   Yet despite this, light refracts into rainbows before him even while shadows play against his face and the tera cotta wall beside him.  This kind of subtle dichotomy is present throughout the film.

Before the video was made his answer to a tweet requesting he make this into a dance video was:
“The message in the song isn’t really about dancing though lol.  It’s more heartfelt.  Kind of odd how they are different.”

It is odd and he plays on this theme of dualism, light/dark, left/right, pain/pleasure, despair and yet the over-riding truth that love is worth all we suffer for it.

“The video and the song are about people who are feeling a little down and a little alone … and just feeling a little frustrated with love or their situation in life. Even though you might feel down with love, there’s something about it you shouldn’t give up on.

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The camera soon pans to a wide shot and there is a huge white arrow painted on the wall beside him that is pointing in the direction he is walking.  The message here is that moving forward is the only way past the pain.

A boy meets the barrier of a tall fence, and without hesitation, surmounts the obstacle and moves on.  A train speeds forward.

David wears his watch on his left wrist when he is outside alone which he  curiously switches to his right wrist when we see him later that night at the party.   He is asked about this on twitter and replies “Yep it actually was intentional.”

It is interesting that in his seven minute Ramblin’ Man vlog, posted shortly before the release of the video, David is wearing a titanium bracelet, called an Equalibryum.  On the website it claims these bracelets are more than a silicon band but, “like armor for the soul,” designed to “regulate the body’s bio-electrical energy flow giving you an edge.”

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I wonder if his wearing the titanium bracelet in the vlog was a clue to the meaning of the intentional switching of the watch across the body.  To clue us in to the message that positive energy has a healing effect.

From an article by Victoria Anisman-Reiner, “Wear Your Watch on the Right Wrist
Protect Your Heart: Common Sense and the Left-Handed Heart Meridian”  dated Apr 4, 2007:

“If you’re right-handed, you probably wear a watch on your left wrist. You might consider switching, however, when you consider the impact that your watch’s battery can have on the health of your heart meridian and, ultimately, on your heart.  The heart is one of the 14 major organs and systems in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Each of these organs has a corresponding meridian, a line of energy flow through the body that becomes strong or weak in tandem with that body part. In healing a weakened organ, the energy of the related meridian is used both to diagnose the health of the body and as a means to begin to strengthen it“.

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Perhaps these two events are unrelated and as someone later tweeted to the person who received the reply from David that it was “intentional,” it may simply be that “my guess about @DavidArchie and the watch switch – He always Chooses The Right – like CTR”
Yet it is telling that immediately after we see the change of the watch to the right wrist, there follows a girl painting a heart on paper that, with the addition of time and help, becomes by its very largeness, a strong visual statement, the image of a strong heart.

It is at least a possibility that in a video about strengthening weakened hearts and spirits that these “intentional” symbols are meant to convey the message that healing can occur if one avoids negative energy and stays positive and hopeful.

At any rate I love that he has made a video that encourages this kind of thoughtful speculation.  I love that the video is not all romantic, bubblegum fluff.  When I read the advertisement for the cast of the video: roller bladders that are capable of astounding feats, an ethnically ambiguous, edgy girl, I thought it would be just that.  Somehow I think David may have exerted his will a bit to make this video reflect what he feels about the song, which is quite different from mere youthful, summer fun.  I have noticed that in his own quiet way he gets respect, simply because he won’t give or accept anything less.  It was only a matter of time before this same quiet insistence on validation, on being valued and respected, would carry over to his vision for his work.

Two examples that have David’s signature all over them is the scene with the small, lonely boy who is invited to play basketball by the bigger boys.  The other is the young girl stooping to help an elderly woman who has dropped her belongings.  Romantic love is not the only kind that is missing in people’s lives.  Loneliness is not confined to only those who have loved and lost romantically, but is a daily part of many lives and if you are human you have experienced these feelings at one time or another.  The moral is clear:  It often takes very little to gladden a heart.

Poof made a very insightful comment about the video:  “To me, David is not looking sad, but intense.   He seriously wants us to listen to the lyrics and his mood fits the lyrics.  The contrast in the happiness and pain in relationships goes back and forth quickly in this song. I think David does a great job of expressing those two sides. I especially love the “look straight in your eye” when he is talking about the “scared in the night” part of the song. (One my all time favorite, IMPORTANT, lyrics I have ever heard) David was, I say it again, stunning.”

There is so much more.  The light bulb at the end of the dark alley, the alleyway itself where he stands alone with one hand on a ledge, the exuberance he displays when hope rises in the end,

the celebration and finally, a smile when someone hands him a cell phone that literally delivers “Joy” in the form of his dear friend.  The smile makes its return and is more welcome for being lost to us for a little while.  Only for a little while.  That is the real message of the song, that our joy will be with us “in a bit” if we will only hang in, hang on; it’s gonna be alright.  From those first slow steps to the ramped up passion in his expressions and movements to that last heart-stopping smile, he takes us with him for the ride of our lives.