What does it feel like when you’ve spent all day trying to act like them, look like them, keep quiet, let it slide, don’t overreact, don’t draw attention…What’s the first thing you do when you go home and close the door on the world? Do you pour yourself a drink? Take off your makeup? Do you ever break something? Do you ever just rage?
“When You Die,” a new music video available to view here from genderqueer artist Julia Weldon, explores just this feeling. Though the song was written as a response to Weldon’s experience slowly losing their father to Parkinson's Disease, the track itself invokes the larger process of accessing one’s deepest feelings of anger and frustration – an emotional violence stirred up by suffocating circumstance – and then, at least for a moment, allowing oneself to let it all go.
This is exactly what filmmakers Jessie Katz and Lindsey Goodman connected to when they first heard the track off Weldon’s latest album, Comatose Hope. Under the umbrella of their production company Piano Factory Pictures, the directors pitched Weldon on a concept that presented a different kind of visual story but with the same emotional thru-line, this time utilizing the power of
Weldon’s gender identity and physical body to depict a person who has been pushed to the brink by having to pass for something they’re not, day after day.
Shot in Long Island using Goodman’s childhood home and the 19 th century landfill Dead Horse Bay, the nearly all-female crew (led by accomplished cinematographer Danielle Calodney) donned protective footwear and goggles as they shot take after take of Weldon smashing objects to pieces in the Goodman family garage and then walking along the beach amongst shards of broken glass,
ceramic and, yes, horse bones – a perfect representation of the aftermath of the character’s rage and catharsis.
“As a gender non-binary artist who just recently had top surgery a couple years ago, it was especially rad to use my new flat chest as a way to tell this story of anger and letting go, vulnerability and empowerment,” says Weldon. “I truly hope that other genderqueer individuals and especially queer youth are able to see the video and feel empowered in themselves and their own unique
bodies.”
“When You Die,” a new music video available to view here from genderqueer artist Julia Weldon, explores just this feeling. Though the song was written as a response to Weldon’s experience slowly losing their father to Parkinson's Disease, the track itself invokes the larger process of accessing one’s deepest feelings of anger and frustration – an emotional violence stirred up by suffocating circumstance – and then, at least for a moment, allowing oneself to let it all go.
This is exactly what filmmakers Jessie Katz and Lindsey Goodman connected to when they first heard the track off Weldon’s latest album, Comatose Hope. Under the umbrella of their production company Piano Factory Pictures, the directors pitched Weldon on a concept that presented a different kind of visual story but with the same emotional thru-line, this time utilizing the power of
Weldon’s gender identity and physical body to depict a person who has been pushed to the brink by having to pass for something they’re not, day after day.
Shot in Long Island using Goodman’s childhood home and the 19 th century landfill Dead Horse Bay, the nearly all-female crew (led by accomplished cinematographer Danielle Calodney) donned protective footwear and goggles as they shot take after take of Weldon smashing objects to pieces in the Goodman family garage and then walking along the beach amongst shards of broken glass,
ceramic and, yes, horse bones – a perfect representation of the aftermath of the character’s rage and catharsis.
“As a gender non-binary artist who just recently had top surgery a couple years ago, it was especially rad to use my new flat chest as a way to tell this story of anger and letting go, vulnerability and empowerment,” says Weldon. “I truly hope that other genderqueer individuals and especially queer youth are able to see the video and feel empowered in themselves and their own unique
bodies.”
