‘Island in the Sun’, a feel-good song that creates the ambiance of a leisure holiday on a sunny island, is sung by Weezer, a post-punk alternative rock band from Los Angeles. It is the second single from the band’s album, The Green Album.The director of the music video, Spike Jonze, is a renowned movie director whose works include Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaption (2002), but he is even more acclaimed in the music video field.
In this music video, members of Weezer enjoy their time with cuddly animals on a secluded field under the sunshine. Not only do pets like puppies and kittens appear, but even wild animals such as lions, bears, chimpanzees, panthers, and giraffes… The members, not intimidated, are rather ever-comfortably rolling around with the animals, taking walks holding hands, lying down and just relaxing together. They even play with the animals tossing them up into the air. The video is full of so many happy scenes, it makes you want to just hop in and join them.
On the one hand, closely examining the members’ behaviors with the animals, it is truly inspiring to see they do just what the animals want, rather than demanding something from the animals. When a bear seems to want to walk over them, they just let it walk them over. When a chimpanzee wants to kiss them, they just let it kiss them. Even when a big bear comes up from behind and licks his nape, Rivers Cuomo naturally reacts with a shrug suggesting, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ From the reactions of the musicians, it doesn’t seem as though the bear is a wild beast. In turn the animals do not hesitate either. In that moment, it seems no wall exists between the animals and members. If the mind’s wall does not even exist between animals and humans, then how could a wall exist between members of the same species, humans? Right, the mind’s wall never really existed, even from the beginning.
Recently, people quite frequently talk about coexistence. Everyone seems to be seriously acknowledging the need and importance of coexistence, and many people are so concerned with the coexistence of groups with different values that numerous columns and academic writings have been published. One dictionary definition of ‘coexist’ is ‘if one thing coexists with another, they exist together at the same time or in the same place. You can also say that two things coexist.’ It is common sense to say that more than one material existence cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Therefore, coexistence is impossible for the matters we see with our eyes. But then, let’s think about coexistence in terms of the mind, rather than the material coexistence. What would happen indeed if these countless walls that we’ve created inside our minds disappeared completely?
(Hip hip~ We’ll never feel bad anymore~)
