Eric Rothman
@ericmsandwich
Filmmaker, editor, animator, stationary bicycle rider, sandwich enthusiast. My work has won very few awards. I currently reside in Dayton, Ohio.
Eric Rothman
@ericmsandwich
Filmmaker, editor, animator, stationary bicycle rider, sandwich enthusiast. My work has won very few awards. I currently reside in Dayton, Ohio.
I’m dying for someone I know to have the experience I had with this album, but I worry it’s not gonna happen. Like, you just have to sit and listen to all the words and feel all the music and do it a few times. Is anyone doing that anymore?
Anyways, it’s like a movie, like with a story that’s emotional and true (or at least feels true), and it’s artfully told, starting and ending in interesting places, and it’s vulnerable and observational and funny and heartbreaking. I literally laughed and cried and said things like, “holy shit” out loud to myself while listening to it. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. And the music is fucking amazing. There’s oboes.
This has gotta be one of the best songs ever. Just a tragic yearning for opportunity and a better life, and kindof knowing deep down that running away isn’t going to be the answer, but doing it anyway because it’s a source of hope. I love so much toward the end of the song, we are tragically seeing into the future at how things do, in fact, fall apart, but then landing back in this moment of decision to go–now or never, this or nothing. And then there’s something deeply American about it all too: the promise of self-reliance as the spoils of hard work, and the romance of hitting the road and the freedom of that.
Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I... See more
Things That Have Shaped Me and Documentary & Documentation
This video changed my life. I’d spent my 20’s and 30’s being confused and burned out, and the ideas in here made it all clear to me, in an instant, why. There is life as an artist before this video, and life as an artist after. Thank you Van and Tom.