Over the Ocean
Low
The first Low song I loved from their early album THE CURTAIN HITS THE CAST (‘96) — a true slow-core record. This track is like a lullaby with a dreamy guitar and brushed drum soundscape.
For me, this song teed up the simple fact both Mimi and Alan would be trading off on vocals. And it showed so beautifully how both could co-exist in a great track and how they would lean into harmonizing together.
It was this record and song that made me pay attention to Low and each subsequent release thereafter. Because their music slowed me down and rendered a certain kind of emotion — equal parts melancholy and hope. My favorite kind of art does this, and it’s a reason I gravitated to slow-core so frequently — especially as I became an adult in the 90’s.
The new movie we made over the pandemic is called ABOVE THE TREES — and I have to wonder if this song OVER THE OCEAN played some subliminal part in the naming of it. It hadn’t crossed my mind until Mimi passed away three days ago. But the poetry in this song does make me want to draw some parallels to our movie’s title and context.
ABOVE THE TREES is about a murder — more specifically the death of a good man named Gabriel de Leon. The story is about how his death impacts loved ones around him with justice hanging in the balance.
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience;
we are spiritual beings having a human experience."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, philosopher, Jesuit priest.
This quote become a touchstone for me while writing the story in 2020 and 2021. I presumed this quote was true during the world building process — that the characters were spiritually linked by fate and their spirits would eventually become unbound from earth.
So moving above the trees and over the ocean are visual and cinematic reflections of future consciousness. Perhaps our spirits will be at peace when this human experience is over.
I haven’t watched this music video in so long and it really moved me this morning. Mimi and Alan were so young and alive and had their whole lives in front of them. As their physical world falls and breaks around them, it’s as if they are spiritual beings in the middle of human experience.
I’m over the ocean
Over the hills
Over the dell
Over the fire line
Over the sand
Over the plan
Over the empire
And if I belong
Then I’ll be longer than expected
And if I’m wrong
The mighty and strong
Will be rejected
