One Pandemic Positive: My Son and I Collaborated on a Music Video by Don Rauf of the band Life in a Blender
The day after my son Leo graduated high school, he left home and hasn’t been back for three years now. He didn’t want to end up melting into the sofa in the basement like some of his friends. He gave childhood the finger and packed his bags. He wanted to get out there and make things happen.
Now he’s 21 and he’s been living in New Orleans for a couple years. New Orleans has a magic to it—he was swept away by the creative energy, food, art, music, and endless rivers of beads. He had never played music in high school, but in New Orleans he started his own band called Big Leather.
I think he needed to get away from his musician dad to delve into music himself. New Orleans is still affordable for artists, and there are all sorts of odd places to play. I saw one of his shows in an old building reeking of pet rabbits and decorated with strange homemade puppets. It’s the type of place you hope to find in New Orleans.
Since moving there, he has visited me and his mom on family trips to California and we’ve seen him in his new adopted home, but since the pandemic, it’s been almost impossible to see each other.
I’ve been eager to find ways to connect other than Zoom. When my band Life in a Blender put out an album this year called SATSUMA (shameless plug—check it out here: www.lifeinablender.net), I asked if Leo would make a music video.
He had studied film in high school and he made a feature with friends called Beach Club and a fun short called The Devil’s Pimple. He gravitates toward the surreal and disturbing. He certainly doesn’t always give you an easy narrative to latch onto, but his films are always an unforgettable trip.
Because of the outbreak, his job waitering had been disappeared, so making a music video gave him some work. The video (which you can find HERE) is for my song “Party in the Drunken Forest,” which is inspired by Peter Wohlleben’s The Secret Life of Trees. I wrote it for the Bushwick Book Club, which is a creative project that has songwriters compose and perform songs based on selected books.
Leo had his own vision with the song, and he came up with a dreamy video of a woman dressed as a clown (Ava Gulassa.) running amok in City Park in New Orleans. She appears to encounter a mysterious rocker who uses a small doll to lure her into an evening of drinking from a family-size wine bottle and rolling down hills.
I think the end result is totally fun, entertaining, and captures the vibe of the song. In some ways, without the pandemic, we wouldn’t have had the impetus to work together. So, although the lockdown has been hard in many ways, it did give Leo and me a chance to do something together despite the distance. Now I’d like to think we’ll do more creative projects together in the future—but let’s not get carried away.
Connect with Life in a Blender:
http://www.lifeinablender.net/
