BY MC GALANG
There is something to be said in the era of the inflated value of speech, particularly of opinion, that it has also bred and cultivated nihilism. These extremes lie at the opposite side of the spectrum in which we conduct our lives through the internet: talking about everything and caring about nothing.
Curiously, or maybe because of it, we’ve found ourselves mirrored in disparate characters, including a washed-up, self-destructive humanoid actor (BoJack Horseman) and an alcoholic mad scientist who takes his timid—and perpetually traumatized—grandson in interdimensional trips, whose premise of existence is a “never-ending fart joke” (Rick and Morty). We have developed intense identification with these characters that stretched the dimensions of absurdism, where nothing makes sense and we are truly alone.
It is with these lens that WAIIAN’s animated music video for his latest single, “Solo Mission,” created by Kevin Malaya, Christian Fabia, High Profile Clothing, and Hail Clothing, confronts his increasingly suffocating existence as difficult as finding ways to survive in a landlocked area by himself. The scope of his isolation is magnified through his open-air surroundings captured by director Ryan Mojica.
WAIIAN has thoughtfully conveyed his own fears, frustrations, and shortcomings in “Solo Mission” through visual metaphors without fetishizing those struggles he recognizes to be universal. Yet his keen sense of awareness equipped him to elevate his voice and asks us if we can hear him, too.
Watch Solo Mission
