Personal Obsessions

To begin with some basic observations:

The MV opens with Ravi and Leo arriving at a dreamy trailer park of sorts? - they seem to be fellow passengers/travel companions/roommates - familiar but also distant.

Ravi is dressed blue; there’s a flash of a frayed blue sweater hanging off the back of his chair; items on table: iPad with iTunes music app and a book with a blue cover with an image of a blue room & the letter L on the cover.

Leo arrives dressed in red; carrying a bag filled with red flowers and a suitcase painted with the same red flowers + a beige car. The suitcase turns out to be a record player and he pulls out a red (blue centered) record and begins listening - with his headphones helpfully labeled with a red R.

When the music starts, they are each transported to a different space. The fact that they both look a little disoriented and curious - seems to indicate that they have somehow switched places with each other and are now inhabiting each other’s outer skin (clothing) as well as interior space (environments previous depicted on their personal items at the onset and filled with these same motifs).

    - Ravi - now in red - finds himself with the beige car painted on Leo's suitcase/record player and even finds the same record player set up in the trunk of the vehicle as well as the same red flowers filling the interior of the car and trunk - except the color of the record is now inverted.

    - On the other hand - we have Leo - now in blue - exploring the blue interior world of Ravi - contained to a single enclosed room - the same room we saw on the cover of Ravi’s “L” book in the beginning. He picks up the collection of books, flips through the pages of Whisper. We see Beautiful Liar and My Light in their midst as well. He runs his fingers along the lines of texts with words highlighted in blue. Instead of reading the words it almost seems like he’s trying to breathe them in or sense them in all the other ways other than sight - in fact we see him closing his eyes as he caresses the pages and brings the book closer to his face… the scene then switches to Ravi who matches this action by covering his own face with his hands.

   - This play on sensory information and processing again appears with the poem that’s plastered behind Ravi (Sensation) as he leaves the car behind and finds time to lounge and rap. He ends up following the lines of red paint which leads him into a dimly lit space…

   - Back to Leo, we see the unraveling blue yarn of Ravi’s sweater from the beginning - a whole stream of yarn now - serving as the counterpart to Leo world's red paint strokes. They tangle across the piano and books scattered across the floor - all originating from that unraveling blue sweater. We see Leo also caressing these lines, following along their path, mirroring Ravi’s actions.

The rest is pretty self-explanatory what with the coming together of the 2 halves - by following the fateful lines of paint and yarn, that eventually become electrical wires leading to a pair of earbuds - (and yes, yarn stick figures that are holding hands but wait they are actually constellations as in shout-out to Starlights!) You know at this point it’s pretty much open season for metaphor bingo - so there’s really no wrong way to read this.

My own current theory is the left ear/right ear - left brain/right brain one - we sometimes simplify the function of our mind as this simple duality: left brain being the home of logic, rationality, order, and language while the right brain is the seat of imagination, passion, emotions, instinct, and expansiveness/connectedness. (Some people who have had left-hemisphere strokes - where essentially your left brain goes offline - have described the experience as being not quite able to distinguish where the edges of themselves end and the external world begin - you become indistinguishable from the air molecules floating around you - you are one continuous being.) Of course I’m painting with broad strokes and this is not a neuroanatomy and physiology class, but... Left brain seeks to categorize and delineate, while right brain seeks to blur out those distinctions and become one with the universe.

Yet without the aid - the very existence - of their other half they cannot survive in this world. Ravi (left brain) would be sequestered in isolation with his books - knowing everything in theory but unable to experience their true nature. Leo (right brain) would be in danger of disintegration - becoming atoms scattered across the universe (again - STARLIGHT - shout-out!) - with passions too intense, and freedoms too reckless.

Even the whole sequence of the MV with the initial encounter, then becoming each other/inhabiting and exploring each other’s worlds, re-encountering and connecting again in another new shared space loosely follows the actual way our brain processes sensory information. For instance: the sounds you hear through your LEFT ear is actually processed in the RIGHT side of your brain and vice versa - which could explain why in the "outside" world Ravi is blue and Leo is red but it's the opposite in the interior world. For the sake of sanity I won’t go on and on about the brain.

Of course - this is all just a framework for further metaphorizing LOL bc: also:

dramatic hand grabs, lingering ear bud placement, modern interpretative couple dance and soul searching gazing of eyeballs - and FATE - and YOU CoMPLETE me - and SOULMATEs but better bc it’s actually brainmates - (mind mates) - WHAT - but of course - L and R love and need each other to survive and thrive and create and travel along this road of life and exploration and thank god for VIXX and N! and Ken! and 93bro Hongbin! and baby Hyuk! and how else can they survive this Kpop industry and also shoutout to all the Starlights! - y’all are seriously sweet and hilarious. Also - N: you def know what that emoji entails - U KNOW you know! Those are not LEFT N RIGHT BRAINS HOLDING HANDS!! - IN any case - I LOVE EVERYONE at this bar. Please send buckets and mops for my tears - thanks.

Also - I could go on about how whisper lyrically could still work with this interpretation - u know - how being in love can be experienced by both sides - u want to temper that overwhelming need to just be one with the other person with rational behavior LOL but you also want them to whisper to you?