The multimedia Songs About Time is an ongoing project from the Rentals, the revolving-door band founded 15 years ago by then Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. Songs About Time finds Sharp and Co. collaborating with a cast of about 50 filmmakers, designers, producers, editors and artists. They began this year-long experiment January 1 and have since made a new black-and-white film every week, not to mention documenting the process with a daily photo diary and recording three mini-albums. (All of this content can be found on the band’s website.) As if Sharp wasn’t busy enough, he is also guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read his introduction.
Sharp: I put these two things together, because Wong Kar-wai’s film 2046 (pictured) and Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood are like companion pieces to me. Both the film and the book express an emotion that I wish the Rentals could try and capture in Songs About Time. In general, Songs About Time is about going back to a place that you haven’t visited in many years. You are returning to a place that once brought you great happiness and meaning to your life. You are standing in there in the middle of this place with a very familiar pulse of life moving all around you. You are just standing there trying to gain some perspective about whom you were all those years ago, where you are now and what happened in all of that space in between. In Spain, the title of Murakami’s fifth book is called Tokyo Blues instead of Norwegian Wood. Murakami has three or four books in this style; to me, they all feel more or less like the same book, but part of me likes that repetition. I see that repetition in most of my favorite writers, musicians and filmmakers. I like to watch them wrestle with the same themes over and over again. I like to watch as they keep approaching the same subjects from multiples angles until they finally feel that they got to the core of what they have been trying to say all along. You can certainly see that kind of repetition in Murakami’s books and in Wong Kar-wai’s films. But to me, 2046 and Norwegian Wood are the best of what they have been trying to say all along. Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RbpQUqosI
