Forthteller "JUKAI" (Official Music Video)

Music Video by Zach Mayfield
Directed by Zach Mayfield, Thom Schultz, and Justin Hatton
Storyline by Thom Schultz and Justin Hatton

Lyrics:

Fall with me into this sea of trees [1]
Gasp with me beneath these wilting leaves
Examine the fathoms of this mind
That I've concealed with cultivated lines [2]

This canopy has blotted out the stars
So I carved the constellations on my arm [3]
To break the bonds the hold me under [4]
I stand atop this man-made wonder

I scale this felsic summit [5]
To bridge the gap [6]
Between this pain and it's release
To cease these scattered thoughts and sleepless dreams

I plant the seeds and nourish them with vices [7]
Entreat the fate that now entices
Feed these roots that clutch till branches grow [8]
To balance out this heart of stone [9]
I see the limbs of liberty [10]
Outstretched for all eternity [11]
to hold the weight of my iniquity
Clambering to find my solace
I am met with severed malice [12]
crashing to the waves below
I hang suspended between what's real and what I know [13]

Will you feel this haunting breath
Or walk with me in shadows?
Will you feel the touch of death
As we stand among the willows? [14]
Can I mold this shape into its form?
Or give this shade its color? [15]
Paint on canvas this internal storm
Giving voice to words I cannot utter

My incessant thoughts conspire
Light the torch to light the pyre [16]
Waiting for the spark of life [17]
To set this wilted tree alight [18]
-
Now taste this bitter tinge
Waiting to be unhinged [19]
By the eroding death

Now taste this bitter tinge
Waiting to be unhinged
By the eroding death within

Footnotes:
1. Suicide Forest, Japan
2. Jamison on suicide happening after patients report not having suicidal thoughts)
3. My mother’s struggle with depression and suicide that culminated in a brief outburst of self-harm; Also a play on: Introvert - "The lines in my palms became constellations"
4. The idea of feeling trapped as witnessed in a conversation about suicide
5. Mount Fuji; also reference to the belief in some cultures of having to scale a volcanic summit to get to the afterlife
6. Golden Gate Bridge
7. Substance abuse
8. Eliot; The Waste Land
9. Ezekiel 36:26
10. Seneca
11. The idea of finality in death and the idea of eternal connectedness often manifested in mental illnesses; find Jamison reference
12. Ophelia; Hamlet
13. The inability to distinguish between reality of delusion in states of psychosis
14. Willows represent adaptivity and survivability, but also the ability to grieve and experience sorrow, I think that’s a pretty powerful juxtaposition
15. Eliot; The Hollow Men
16. Slaves and maidens being thrown on the funeral pyre of dead royalty
17. Jamison; Night Falls Fast
18. Isaiah 56:3
19. Another conversation about the topic of suicide