About a week and a half after originally viewing Erykah Badu’s video for “Window Seat,”- the first single available from the newest album, New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh- it occurred to me that it really had a hold on me. After reading several blogs, and other online commentaries, as well as being asked “what did you think of Erykah’s new video?” I decided I had some thoughts. My musings are not about the so-called controversy, I do not think for one second that the artist expected anything less- she would not be the architecture of an infinite Baduizm if everything was nicely packaged. Her art has always caused a stir, most great artists do.
My initial viewing left me in awe and admiration for one of my favorite artist. At the same time I was a little disappointed that this was what she chose to do for this song I had grew to love in the weeks leading up to the viewing. And, admittedly I was a little confused as to what it all meant. Now I pride myself on being able to look beyond the surface and finding alternative meanings to different phenomena. Nevertheless, after my first two viewings (I watched it twice when I first received the link) I somehow wanted to forget it. I did not want to think about all the things that the video could mean, especially with me being an avid Erykah fan. I mean I did not want to find out that it was deeper than I thought, or that it actually was not deep at all. I feared, maybe in her artist’s way she just wanted to get naked and shock people…but I still heard the song over the subtle and loud visual.
The song, for me in longing for a "window seat...nobody next to me...just a ticket out of town to look around, and a safe touch down…” invoked a space of solitude in the midst of an inescapable public. The video indeed creates this. Yet the song’s solitude allowed one, me as I imagined, to experience a type of anonymity. A window seat passenger can go easily unnoticed. Touching down in another space, place, timezone even, without being given a second glance. The end result leaves open the possibilities at the site of touchdown. When traveling, unless someone is meeting you, you may arrive at another place where you continue to go unnoticed, blending into the background or you can decide to emerge and embrace the newness. Whatever you decide, you do not have to answer to anyone because meeting and departure spaces are unstable and adaptable. It is in fact one of the things I have grown to appreciate about traveling fairly often. I love just being without any inhibitions. Now I do understand traveling is just the mechanism Badu chooses to explore this quietly loud space she speaks about in the song. And the video did not, in fact because it is Erykah Badu, could not be a literal interpretation of the song. But I still felt like I wanted something different.
The video’s creation of public solitude- unlike the song, was one that I felt, forced other people to participate in the journey and to have a jolting reaction, if just for a second. Now it is true that she shot it Guerrilla Style, in one shot, and many people did not have a time to obviously react. And, maybe some of this is just the nature of a video, there has to be a camera to capture the moment, and we as humans are still curious about people's intentions with cameras- so one would draw prolonged glances either way. But I do think that the exposing of one's soul creates a different type of prolonged glance that for me is not invoked by the song when I listen to it. It is exposing in a different way--the end in particular. At that point in the song, there is a vulnerability that she allows others to be privy to..."I need you to want me, I need you to miss me, I need your attention..." And maybe this was the point of departure for the video. This need to be vulnerable to the omniscient you. But the assassination of one's character as Erykah described the ending in several interviews, was unexpected for me as a listener and lover of her art. The need to have a window seat space, was something that I could really feel, but did not anticipate it being so exposing that it invited a social death.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the video and Badu's brilliance for just this reason. She is unapologetic in her expression, and effortlessly refuses a single path. It takes a special artist-- one that is so serious about her shit- to be able to have us even enter the conversation about "what does it all mean..."
For that Ms. Badu, Salud.
