Statement:

I have always been enthralled by loneliness. It is the emotion I can best understand and empathize with. For as long as I can remember, most sorrowful emotions such as heartbreak, hopelessness, or grief don’t affect me much when I watch characters in a movie go through them, or when I read about them in a book. Though I can empathize with the emotions of the characters, it has never been enough to make me cry. However, if there was any indication of loneliness included in those emotions, I would burst into tears almost instantly.

I am not entirely sure why loneliness has such an effect on me, especially when I actually enjoy being alone. As a very introverted person, I value time to myself; I see it as a time where I can wholly and truly be myself, where I can do whatever I want without worrying about the input of others. I’m not bothered by eating by myself or doing activities alone, which sounds incredibly contradictory when I also say that I don’t like being lonely. 

Throughout my four years at Brooklyn College, I’ve produced many works that relate to being alone or lonely; it was never intentional, and I hadn’t realized it until I looked back on old work at the beginning of this final semester. My goal for this project is to have a better understanding of myself and to produce the “final'' project in my series of loneliness.

 My project can best be described as a narrative music video. It tells the story of three individuals who are going through their own iterations of loneliness, and how they cope with it. Using illustration and sound, I convey the emotions of these three completely different lives, whose stories are tied together through the common emotion of feeling lonely. 

The original song I used for my video was produced by a person online who goes by the username, Niki; it was in Japanese and was sung by a computer-generated singing synthesizer called Vocaloid. Using various English translations of the song, I rewrote its lyrics to complement my story, while still maintaining the message of the original. Since the original song was posted as an Utauloid, the song can be used commercially so long as it is a cover and credit is given to the original artist; thus, I commissioned Eric Castiglia to sing an English cover of the song to use in my video. 

The video style of my project was inspired by the independent music circle, HoneyWorks, who produce their own music using Vocaloid or in collaboration with various independent singers. Their videos utilize illustrations with animated graphics to tell a story, which is a common format used by online Japanese music producers. I’ve always admired this video style and wanted to create one of my own; this project fulfills that desire and expresses a part of myself that I have trouble communicating.