Rostam (Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend) released a new track today and a video to accompany it which features modern dancers Jack Grabow and Sam Asa Pratt.
“Gravity Don’t Pull Me” is about a boy who broke his heart but “I want people to hear the song as ultimately having a positive message,” Batmanglij told NPR in an interview.
Batmanglij describes both the song and the idea for the video as coming to him in insistent moments of inspiration — he says he was “pretty much possessed by the song” as he was writing it and knew he wanted the video to be an expression of symmetry. At first, even he didn’t understand that impulse. But both of Batmanglij’s parents are from Iran, and eventually he realized he was drawing inspiration from the symmetry of Persian rugs. “I think it was a subconscious thing,” he says. For most of the video, Grabow and Pratt dance as mirror images of each other. At certain moments, however, the two break from each other and dance independently. Batmanglij says Grabow and Pratt left moments open for improvisation when they choreographed the piece. The result is the striking imagery of two people falling perpetually in and out of sync with each other in a way that mirrors the song’s heartsick lyrics: “So I bite my lip and I hold my tongue / And I wait for the pain to stop / But some days I still let you back in.”
For Batmanglij, the lyrics, music and visual imagery are meant to inform one another. “I hope there’s something bigger that lives between all those things interacting with each other,” he says. “For me, the idea of writing a song, recording it, making a video — it’s like, you go around the moon and you come back. You accomplish everything there was to accomplish … It feels like telling the whole story.”
Watch:
Lyrics:
now it’s been so many years
I wish I could say honestly
gravity don’t pull me
that feeling coming through my body
a train under my feet
that’s hurtling beneath me
and the worst way I ever felt
was from this same boy that I still miss
’cause I messed it up
and it broke my heart
and the worst things I ever did
was to this same boy I couldn’t help it
I messed things up
and it broke my heart
now it’s been so long I honestly
wish I could see clearly
but the memory still hurts me
if I feel it in the morning
a gentle street that’s bustling
underneath my open window
but the worst way…
…and I broke his heart
so I bite my lip and I hold my tongue
and I wait for the pain to be gone
but some days I still let you back in
so I bite my lip and I hold my tongue
and I wait for the pain to be gone
but some days I still let it back in
but the worst way…
