{"id":621,"date":"2019-04-03T10:23:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T09:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/?p=621"},"modified":"2022-06-07T22:52:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T21:52:00","slug":"weyes-blood-over-het-klimaatverhaal-achter-titanic-we-moeten-onszelf-nederiger-opstellen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/en\/2019\/04\/03\/weyes-blood-over-het-klimaatverhaal-achter-titanic-we-moeten-onszelf-nederiger-opstellen\/","title":{"rendered":"Weyes Blood over het klimaatverhaal achter Titanic: \u201cWe moeten onszelf nederiger opstellen\u201d\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late 2011, at the height of the Occupy movement, she was there, and at times she still joins ocean clean-ups on the California coast. But in recent years, Natalie Mering has increasingly traded life as a climate activist for that of a musician, under the name Weyes Blood. The sense of responsibility has remained \u2013 and sounds louder than ever on her sometimes dreamy, sometimes very theatrical fourth album Titanic Rising<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by: <\/strong>Ruben van Dijk
Photos: <\/strong>Hannah Jacobs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is some confusion at the beginning of the conversation, which very aptly takes place on a rambunctious waterfront. The title of Mering's latest, it turns out, is not<\/em> a reference to the flopped B-movie Raise the Titanic<\/em> (1980, starring Sir Alec Guinness), in which the American secret service tries to surface the wreck of the Titanic (whereabouts unknown at the time) and thus trump the Soviet Union with the minerals that the ship is said to harbor. So not that film, although it portrays well the megalomania and misplaced arrogance of humanity that Mering wants to highlight with the album. \u201cThat man supposed to have all power over nature, that we thought we had built an unsinkable ship, which then collided and sank on its maiden voyage \u2013 that seems to me very similar to what we are dealing with now, except that now we are not bumping into an ice sheet, but the ice sheets are melting. The entire civilization is sinking and the people who will be hit hardest are Third World countries that do not have the resources to deal with this rapid climate change. Titanic Rising<\/em> is about rising sea levels and how the symbolism of the Titanic can hopefully rise from the ocean, like a phoenix from the ashes, to remind people that we don't have all the power over nature and that we need to be more humble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"I was amazed that Titanic<\/em> had no political impact whatsoever.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Not that James Cameron didn't make the Titanic iconic enough. Perhaps even too iconic, if you ask Mering. It is one of the \u201cmovies I watched as a kid\u201d that she refers to on the stand-out track 'Movies' (a track culminating in a very cinematic interpolation of Arvo P\u00e4rt's 'Fratres'), which left an indelible impression on her at the time. \u201cIt won Best Picture, was the most successful film of all time at the time, and yet the problems of the film did not seem to reach the public at all. Ever since I was a little girl, I was so aware that it was about human pride and about the way \u2018third-class citizens\u2019 are treated, how they bear the brunt of the big decisions made by white men. I was amazed that it had no political impact whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mering likes films, she sings on 'Movies' and this is evident time and again in the conversation - but the medium also has fundamental problems, she says, and she realizes that too at a young age. From the age of twelve she refused, out of principle, to watch them for three years. \u201cI felt so betrayed, because I believed very much in happy endings, that I too was entitled to a happy ending, but I realized that I was completely brainwashed by that crap. They also meant so much to me.\u201d That rebellion did not last long, she has hardly become any less outspoken about it, although here it mainly focuses on what they call 'movies' in the US; box office blockbusters, snacks, and so something completely different from \u2018film\u2019. We so badly want those movies to be a culturally unifying experience, says Mering, but as long as they also have to earn money, they remain too hollow, too insignificant to have a real (positive) philosophical impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollywood's brainwashing practices often reside in love and how it has come to be distorted in the 21st century, a recurring theme on Titanic Rising<\/em>. On \u2018Everyday\u2019, with another naval reference, Mering sings of those friends everyone has, \u2018sailing off on their ships to nowhere.\u2019 \u201cNowadays there is a certain restlessness to dating; people who exclaim, \u2018I'm broken, I'm done, I'm calling it quits,\u2019 and before you know it, they're dating again. We have a distorted view of how relationships should be, but in the end we are all mammals who need love and affection, so you may be holding a disproportionate image of a \u2018soulmate\u2019, someone who is going to be everything to you - but that kind of expectation is simply unrealistic.\u201d And as far as Mering is concerned, it's movies like Titanic<\/em> that are responsible for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet she has a soft spot for it, as for that other blockbuster full of seaset calamities: Jaws<\/em>. Squabbling and screaming sounds from that film were repeated several times as a motif on her previous album Front Row Seat to Earth<\/em> (2017). And that's by no means the only water-related symbolism in Weyes Blood's work: she has already appeared as a mermaid in the video for 'Seven Words' and in the video for 'Movies' she really dives in deep.<\/p>\n\n\n