TENGU
by Elssy
To me, the feeling of déjà vu comes from smells, colors, sounds and most of all, the famous "taste of smell" - a phenomenon that I always had trouble explaining.
This feeling brings me back to certain places, very personal, often filled with nostalgia & always endorsed by my melancholy.
I often see the sea. The summer. The heat. The smell of the seasons too, because each season has a smell of its own. The feeling of déjà vu often arises in the summer, coming at me in the evening or during hot days through its smell, its various sounds, or just by the way the wind blows.
A song in particular that always sends me back to this feeling is : "Sweet Dreams." It’s almost as if this song got inside my head for good & branded me, marking my brain with a personal yet fictitious memory.
There is a memory of a fire that I see in the distance, from the top of the stone steps I was standing on. I can't figure out if it's real or not and if this song was indeed playing during the fire. What I know for sure is that it was in the middle of summer, during an early evening in a small village in the Mediterranean.
Strong. Strange.
I also have the vision of a large wooden wheel, turning on & on while announcing its bad omen. The wheel always appears in the same period.
Again, is this real or fantasy? I don’t have the answer to this question.
In my opinion, the feeling of déjà-vu is really close to dreaming. That is how I associate it with my music. A place where I welcome all of my fears, memories and repressed demons, that I transform into soothing and captivating material.
The strength of melancholy.
This particular feeling emerged on the set of ‘TENGU’ my most recent music video. The director, Louise Le Pape, asked me to play with my hands and their shadow projected on a blue wall. When the take ended, everyone went silent. She and my manager almost cried. “Something in the way I moved my fingers,” they told me.
IMAGE CREDIT:
MEET ELSSY
Elssy is a young French artist based in Paris. She is a songwriter, performer in an alternative electropop style with ethnic influences, and also co-directs her music videos.
