True Love

Single Channel Color Video, Sound

2018

A visual tone poem inspired by the beautiful, but potentially tragic, mating ritual of the American Bald Eagle. The two soar up to high altitudes, lock talons, and spiral towards the earth. If they release in time and complete the courtship ritual, they become a bonded pair for life. If they don’t release from one another in time, both will crash into the ground and die. This act creates a tension between succeeding with their mate and maintaining their own survival.

The score for the video comes from the infamous song “True Love Waits” by the band Radiohead. The song was written 21 years before it was recorded and released on a studio album. It began as a hopeful and proud love song at the beginning of lead singer Thom Yorke’s relationship with artist and scholar Rachel Owen, the woman who would later become his wife and the mother of their two children. The song was finally recorded and released in 2016 as a resigned and melancholy ballad after their divorce and her subsequent death from cancer. The song refers to the same relationship, but in its two stages, chronicling its aging and eventual deterioration. This piece is inspired by the notion of tragedy, abandonment, the pain of loss, and the idealization of romantic love.

Dedicated to the memory of Jerry A. Byrd