Guest
“Grow Like a Plant“ by Greg Saunier from WE SANG, THEREFORE WE WERE out April 26 2024 on Joyful Noise Recordings Creative direction and dance by Sophie Daws Music by Greg Saunier Titles by Ryan Hover This song addresses that annoying quirk of the homosapien mind where it thinks it’s made of higher quality molecules than the rest of the universe. For millennia civilizations managed to temper this suicidal arrogance with ritual. Until 500 years ago, when a handful of self-appointed experts invented The Enlightenment, proposing that men can solve any problem given enough brooding and/or physical violence; that the cosmos is actually nothing but an inert blob of matter for us to buy and sell. What if this is all wrong? What if it’s humans who are really the mindless instinct-machines, competing for territory, food, and mates, and it’s the plant and animal kingdoms that secretly know how to think and have fun? - Greg Just as the song doesn’t stay fixed (in one rhythm, one emotional register), I wanted the dance and my relationship to the camera/audience to shift constantly. In our improvised noise project, New Mom, Greg and I often talk about shifting before any musical part has time to settle — before it registers as a ‘musical part.’ We aren’t trying to find a ‘groove’ in the sense of trying to hit one emotion or tone. Doing so would feel false. As soon as I felt myself trying to seduce the camera, a future audience, a hierarchy, I shifted focus. Sometimes the focus was inward (eyes closed). Sometimes it was outward (eye contact). Maybe sometimes it was on the joy and fun of Greg’s danceable song. - Sophie #deerhoof #gregsaunier #growlikeaplant #sophiedaws
