As it is, Cuushe's Airy Me played over the 3,000 plus hand-drawn sketches of Kuno Youko is a delirious experience that bewildered my emotions, hesitating their entrance, and my thoughts, having trouble registering what was happening. Despite that, I'll try my best to interpret and make sense of this five-minute fever dream.
Since the music video is a field of symbolism, there are several important things to be noted here that contribute to the clarity of its meaning when contemplated.
Right off the bat we can see that the video handles topics surrounding life and death. Bear with me as we piece together the puzzle fragments slowly but surely. Disclaimer that this review is a reflection of my chronological thought process happening in real time with me writing while figuring things out. As such, don't expect a steady hand following one road; I believe I've swerved in my beliefs a bit at least a few times.
The music video is set in the hospital, a building known for the medical care of living creatures spearheaded by doctors and nurses where physical and mental ailments are investigated and cured, where life force is tampered to be prolonged yet where efforts might inevitably be in vain despite sacrifices of time and finances as the quietus embraces the animate. In establishing this setting, the essence of life and death is amplified.
In the beginning of the MV one of the hospital rooms was burning. We look into the given synopsis. Mysterious medical experiments take place; a fire spells an operational malfunction. This beginning already means something is amiss in the holy ground of caretaking, most especially after we come across the chimera sequences later in the video.
An out-of-breath Girl is seen running into the woods. Her identity might perhaps be a Test Subject who escaped from the hospital's experimentations. The Girl eats an apple from a tree to nourish her breathless state. After a while the camera focuses her saddened eye through a keyhole.
Although the forbidden fruit of Eden was an unnamed one, the apple was the most popular placeholder. With that in mind, the apple is a symbolism of knowledge, for better or worse. Genesis 2:16-17 explains how its partaking assures death from what once was an immortalized state. In eating the apple the Girl gains knowledge of good and evil and clothes her with regular mortality. As such, the girl is a simple human.
Yet being seen through a keyhole denotes separation from a boundary. Keyholes in general are a part of doors. What this means is that the Girl, upon eating the apple on the tree, elevates her status into a Nurse, who, despite being a mortal human, has knowledge on the ways to manipulate one's life to a degree. This is why my theory marks the Girl at the beginning as the Nurse we see throughout the video.
The nurse is a steward that is obligated to prolong one's life on doctor's orders. They remedy ills as best as they can directly in the battleground of life and death. When we look at it in a rather religious perspective, nurses are assistants of the Lord (Doctors). As such, they may be seen as angels in the form of humans. (A brief slip of a figure looking like the Virgin Mary at 3:55 ensures religious connotations.)
Caretakers of residents of the hospital, nurses primarily engage with the sick and say their goodbyes the moment patients are revitalized. They meet people of all ages: kids, they clean up their messes; mothers and their babe, they assist their needs; the elderly, they help them do simple things (all three seen continuously in a portion of the video). In this case, a sequence shows the Nurse aiding an elderly man push the door while a butterfly goes out with him.
Medical professionals are authorities as the handlers of life. We put our utmost faith and trust in them as we view these people as bearers of holy knowledge to solve every issue surrounding our bodies and minds. In this Earth, they are truly superior in multitudinous ways.
The butterfly is a recurring creature in the song. Its representations are already familiar: growth, life's beauty, departed spirits, and metamorphosis. The morphing of forms will be an idea worth remembering. The butterfly's casual flutter around and about the video sprinkles connotations of the insect's transformation especially as we approach the chimera parts.
After showing the song's title, Airy Me, a striking image of a rabbit incorporated in a lamp-esque contraption where its nostrils are attached to two wires connecting to the bulb above suddenly appears on screen. The rabbit candelabra exhales and inhales and the light shines and dims in accordance with the creature's breaths. It's as if the rabbit is supplying light through its respiration. As for the lighting device's mechanism, it shows how our simples breaths influence the way light emits, that our breaths emit light in the first place, that we are lights that depend on our respiratory capabilities as a source. While living, regardless of the form, we can influence.
Additionally, the illustration looks akin to a hospital patient affixed with a nasal cannula for better oxygen airflow. It helps that a patient ward setting follows this scene. As such, the rabbit can be identified as a Test Subject selected as patients of the facility. Patients are dependent on nurses and doctors to help cure their illnesses especially as admittance to a hospital implies a condition leaning on the rather concerning. Left alone without the care of medical professionals, these individuals can potentially be severely debilitated, or in the worst case, die.
These aspects of being human and being a Test Subject correlates to the rabbit's placement here. These are social creatures which are known to always be in groups. Dependent in others' presence as hell, it is known that rabbits can die of loneliness and that such a thing is written off as an official cause of death.
Just to add a nugget of knowledge, Internet symbolisms define rabbits as symbols of fertility and craftiness. A rabbit can allegedly be "a guardian of pregnant women and newborn children" and because of that, it is associated with "deep understanding of the cycle of life".
To tie all of this up, the rabbit which can be a human--as a social creature--that is a Patient/Test Subject of the hospital--dependent on the care of nurses and doctors to continue living, where leaving them alone can mean death--supplying light through its respiration reflect our state as living beings on this earth that are heavily influenced not only by the self, but also by others. Our breaths are not ours alone, and in the context of medicine, a new perspective is opened. Further, this moving picture provides a suggestion of the multifaceted nature of man as complex life forms since we can compare it to a variety of creatures as well, be they living or not.
This will prove integral for the later points where I relate the ward's ceiling fan with the meaning of the song, Airy Me.
We move on to the next group of scenes centered around the patient ward where the Nurse gives injections to what looks like a severely afflicted person with a face resembling the Nurse. Going on a bit of a tangent, the kid, the mother early into the video also have similar facial features as her, bar the elderly man--it is still important that he has a face. Only the Doctor does not have a face, which perhaps supports his position as a God.
Going back, at the hit of the shot what looks like a head contorts into experimental paraphernalia which sits beside test tubes and a shelf full of different butterfly species. This bit reinforces the fact that the hospital is indeed artificially engineering the life force of patients. Although the criteria for test subjects were not specified, I believe these people are judged to be on the brink of death and can only rely on desperate measures, which perhaps gives the Nurse and the Doctor an excuse to probe and modify.
In one segment the Nurse's shadow strips into the peeled-off skin of an apple. The fruit is then divided into smaller slices and fed to the Patient by the Nurse. We go back to the theory that the Girl at the beginning was a Test Subject and after eating a whole apple, transcended into a Nurse. Perhaps this is a comment that being a Nurse, not limited to the occupation, is something to be strived for as a kind helper to other beings that are in need of further reasons to live. Or this could simply be the way to create more nurses for the hospital. But I digress as we reach closer to the Chimera episode.
Before that, we see again the rabbit candelabra, a wheel of lights, an organ growing and looking like a plant, and a broken apple filled with live caterpillars, I assume.
The caterpillar is the first stage of being metamorphosed into a butterfly--the first stage of growth. In conjunction with the apple, this might talk about how nurses and doctors, with their knowledge, bring forth life and growth which can result into an entirely different creature after their service. If we go back to the Girl to Nurse theory, feeding the apple of caterpillars to the patient backs up that the hospital is creating more Nurses. It could also mean that they are creating new creatures entirely, for an objective that I still haven't surmised. But don't count on these assumptions completely just yet, for the climax can levy new interpretations.
After a couple of injections, the Nurse, with a dismal face, presses the nose of the Test Subject, transforming him into a Chimera. "A chimera, according to Greek mythology, was a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature, composed of different animal parts." Merriam-Webster states that it is "an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts" and due to its absurd monstrosity, "an illusion or fabrication of the mind".
In this fever dream of a music video the Chimera is an existence laden with interpretations. It being an illusion makes sense if we see this as a metaphor to a situation in reality. And so let's think about this morphed creature deeply.
So the Patient turns into a Chimera. It rampages as it constantly changes forms. The Nurse runs away; windows shatter as if the scene from the beginning of the MV is repeating. What does the Chimera Test Subject represent here? For one, it can be thought of as a failed Test Subject as the Patient transforms into an abomination, one which warrants the Nurse to flee. Perhaps the butterflies in the locker of the Doctor and the caterpillars on the apple imply that the hospital is making butterflies, replicating the beautiful process of metamorphosis for man to escape suffering and fly free as sacred creatures who achieved the summit of growth. Butterflies can be thought of as nurses too, as the pinnacle position portion of the interpretation can reflect a medical professional's capability to manipulate life for humanity's benefit, which is already in a scale so grand, almost divine. Therefore, the stark dichotomy between the morbid Chimera and a butterfly creates thick tension in this scene.
However, the endlessly morphologically changing Chimera Patient bloomed into several little butterflies with faces similar to the Nurse and the Test Subject to kiss the Nurse on the lips. Another point of view plays while this was occurring: a first-person perspective of the Patient pressuring their legs to rise and open the door leading to the Nurse, capturing her with an embrace so mellow, sincere, and light. Affection and unity is highlighted.
I believe that the song, Airy Me, was sung in the perspective of the Test Subject. There was only one occasion where we had a first-person POV, and that was at 4:11 in the patient ward with a look on the ceiling fan above. Perhaps, the Patient is there in place of us, and this video is played for us. Let's take a look at the lyrics.
The song in itself plays a sorrowful tune of a person at the edge of despair, almost giving up on life until salvation was given in the form of another person's existence. Without that individual, the singer will feel like they'll disappear. The lyrics present the morphing and coalescing into immaterial configurations, making the concept of Chimera, forms through butterflies, the Nurse's shadow into apple skin, and other such evidences of concrete to abstract and morphology relevant. The wish to not be anything and the wish to not feel anything explains the severe ailments of the patient growing transparent, i.e., nearing the spirit's extinguished form. Like an airy self, be one with the atmosphere away from the clutches of the earth.
A ceiling fan blows currents of air into motion. It relates to the Patient's initial desire to be, or current state of, an airy life form. The formlessness of air is similar to a Chimera's ever changing form. Technically it has form, but it's much like a fabrication, and there is no real form.
So the Chimera and the Test Subject are one and the same. However, limitations of form cannot hinder our desire to offer love to people important to us. I think this song predominantly is an appreciation of life and people and a call for help all the same. It shows our dependence, especially when we are in rock bottom, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing perhaps, as that reaction explains our drive to live and continue to be lights rather than disappear into nothingness. The way that the Patient opened the door to the other side of the dimension where medical professionals like the Nurse is in shows the Patient's efforts to express gratefulness for receiving life from her. It also supports one of my interpretations that Test Subjects can turn into Nurses, caregivers of life, and that this is a goal: to spread kindness to people no matter the age, no matter the status. Even if being a Nurse can be lonely as they sacrifice themselves in servitude to humanity, locked in the other side of the door as per the ending, it is still an occupation noble and holy. When we look at Airy Me being sung by the Nurse, it just shows the mutualism present when we help one another.
Cuushe's Airy Me visually adapted by Kuno Youko is a thought-provoking animated festival of interpretations that incorporate various ideas of life and death and the multifaceted nature of humans.
What even is the Girl, and why was she escaping? If she were indeed a Test Subject, then why did she not feel gratefulness to the Nurse for giving her life? Why did she not turn into a Chimera if indeed history just repeated itself in the cycle of life and death occurring in the hospital? If she is not a Test Subject, then what is she? Is she already a Nurse--is she the Nurse from the video? Perhaps the worried look she had throughout was because of her feeling trapped in this occupation in the bonds of the Doctor. No joy ever escaped her face aside from when the Patient embraced her. Maybe the bleak atmosphere is faithful to its message: the Nurse just wants to die. She is the singer of Airy Me, but instead of having prevented disappearance, she wishes to puff away like air. The Patient is the Nurse and she was trying her hardest to kill herself, and in the end she succeeded in creating a self inside her that was strong enough to put an end to her life, mimicking the internal conflict one has when committing suicide because of attachment to this world and fear of the unknown. It was a kiss of death literally blowing her brains off, and a consenting embrace of Death. But the fact that she didn't die at the end by the Chimera's butterfly kiss and the Patient's embrace means that maybe, she's already immortal and escaping the hospital to eat the apple in the beginning means that she has achieved mortality, that which she always wanted to have? With that frame of mind, the symbolisms transform into entirely different things, and many feel out of place. Maybe then, the Nurse's wistful look on the butterfly is a sign of her longing for rest as a departed spirit.
This lack of confidence in interpretation due to the subtle visual storytelling I cannot fully pierce stirs bewilderment deep inside, however subpar it is to my decision to think about this positively.
Although I share both sides of the coin, I thoroughly enjoyed this unexpected contemplation. My interpretations might be far, but the journey of attempting to figuring this out was worthwhile, not a degree I'd expect from a music video that runs for 5 minutes and 38 seconds. It goes to show how much thought is infused in works of art.
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