The meaning behind “Calling the rain”

“Calling the rain” is an acoustic song with the collaboration of folk singer Yasmine Krull. Other instruments such as flute and drums are used to reinforce the natural ambience of the song. Visually the video shows the connection of nature with the human being and symbolizes the woman as a natural restoring power. However, there are details that are important to evaluate. To begin with, let’s analyze what the conceptual content of the song tells us:

Moods and emotions
Circles vibrations
Dark days are rising
In eternal remembrance
I feel like I have failed my life
When thoughts of sorrow lead my mind
I feel like calling the rain
I feel like calling the rain
Vaguely and clearly
Threatening and knocking
Dark cloud formation
From vanquished desperation
Hoping for enlightment
But holding the light
Being moved but not ready to cry
I feel like calling the rain

The song alludes to deep and complex human emotions such as despair and fear that arise in moments of uncertainty like black clouds that ruin the normality of life. In these circumstances, the interpreter expresses a feeling of emptiness because nothing would make sense in a reality that cannot be controlled, let alone predicted. The frustration of feeling overwhelmed by life’s own determination is a recurrent feeling in the song. Faced with this incapacity, the author invokes rain as an ultimate natural resource for its radical and healing effects.

Of course, behind these words there is a strong philosophical background, but we will return to this part at the end. First let’s review the visual composition of the video clip to see what associations it has with the conceptual part.

The video starts with a novel shot. A group of people appear naked submerging in the depths of a river. Then we see them walking through various natural landscapes such as forests and fields. At some point they stop and some of them look up at the sky waiting for the arrival of something or someone. Immediately we see that the sky begins to become cloudy and a woman dressed in black appears alone in various scenarios, sometimes dancing or moving her arms as if she were being part of a ritual. When the rain arrives we see different shots sometimes exalting the natural landscape, the beauty of the plants and trees feeding on the energy provided by nature. We also see the dancing woman accompanying the others who take advantage of the properties of the rain to get wet or clean themselves. We see them opening their arms as a sign of good reception. At the end they leave while nature recovers the luminosity it had before their visit. In the final shot, the people who were initially submerged at the bottom of the river resurface, indicating that they are alive and healthy.

There are several details that are part of the visual construction of the music video. First, the entire shoot is filmed in a pale orange tone. The color orange is often used to indicate change or transition (because of its association with the passing of the weather season). So it is a color that represents transformation (of any kind). But there is more. The people walking the fields are not doing so allegorically. Their faces indicate concern and fear because they do not know what nature can offer them. In that sense the change would be accompanied by uncertainty or insecurity, that is why the orange color acquires a pale and darker tone. Previously there is a scene in which these characters dive into a river which indicates that they did it voluntarily because they needed a change in their lives.

So change or transition of states is the fundamental theme of this production, but not just any change. Invoking nature and being cleansed by the force of rain are radical conditions for change. This is not a tribal or ethnic group video, but of a death metal band that composes songs in a state of high intensity. Here is another novelty because the song does not use electric instruments. It is all natural acoustics. Therefore, what would be transmitted is a message of weariness, tiredness and disappointment of modern city life, or in other terms of the technological modernity in which we live. The song evokes a return to nature as a process of integration of which the human being is a part and at some point naturally returns to it.

The other striking element is the woman who appears dressed in black and dancing. First it should be noted that this character is not part of the group that dives into the river but appears later. Her presence is directly associated with nature. It does not come from culture but is part of a deep reality. We could invoke the concept of “anima” that Carl Jung constructed to suggest that the feminine is part of the collective unconscious. In the video clip this interpretation is more profound. The group of people who enter the forest do not do so only to seek in nature the answer to their afflictions, but to find their anima as a complex process of deep restoration. The black would be associated with mystery and the spiritual invocation of change, that is why we always see the woman dancing because she is part of a supernatural state that can repair what culture has discarded as irreparable.

In the final part of the video clip, we observe the restorative power of nature that feeds trees and plants, giving them life and energy through the rain. People entering the forest are carried away by this force and pay tribute and respect to it by raising their arms or building harmonious acoustic notes as a sign of veneration. There is a very striking scene in this regard in which a man is shown playing his acoustic guitar notes in the shade of a dying tree. This is powerful because it would reinforce the above idea.

Finally, it is proposed to take the visual construction of the video clip towards an appropriate philosophical interpretation. While the production could be categorized as naturalistic or environmentalist, there are also elements of an overwhelming pessimism towards life. The motivations border on the disappointment and frustration felt by people living in an exhausted and self-destructive modernity. That is why it is suggested to return to the natural as a last resort in order not to lose the humanity that culture is taking away from us. In this sense “Calling the rain” is more associated with the ideas of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. For this German thinker, life is a misery: an endless circuit of pain, suffering and boredom, which is only momentarily relieved by the most fleeting moments of satisfaction. And then the individual dies, coming to his inevitable end.

The coincidences are not only in the pessimism, but also in the way to get out of it. In “Calling the rain” it is suggested that returning to nature, to reconnect with the anima and the natural acoustics of life is what cures us of the diseases of civilization and the limitations of reality. In Schopenhauer the way out is in art and in letting oneself be absorbed by suffering itself. The latter is a painful process, but liberating because it suppresses the will, the recognition of oneself. The human being becomes “nothing”, a being without desires that exists in a void. Schopenhauer calls this state ” sanctity”. Here we connect with “Calling the rain” because let’s remember that the video starts with a group of humans immersing themselves in a river. The video does not go into details, but it could be interpreted that these people committed suicide because their life lost meaning. The video, then, would be a supernatural narration of the journey that these people make in another dimension of reality.

Probably these people got fed up with living and found in self-inflicted suffering a way out to become nothingness, in that condition invoked by Schopenhauer to reach sanctity. The saint has no desires or aspirations and therefore does not suffer. Like compassion, holy self-abnegation is something that surpasses the individual subject.

Schopenhauer considered the world to be a dark and disturbing place. The greatest achievement would not be to excel in this world, but to overcome it. Achieving sanctity allows us to leave this world. We become nothing, and the world is nothing to us.

Happily, the video culminates with an encouraging scene. The same people who submerged themselves in the river resurface from it with vitality and with their spirits repaired. That at least is what is suggested. And somehow it also connects with Schopenhauer’s thought because they finally overcame the fatal imposition of the world they escaped, but they did it after living the supreme suffering of becoming nothing, reaching divinity and coming back repaired.