The prompt: Watch “No Halo” and “OMG Rock and Roll.” Find inspiration from one or both of these videos to write about something in your life, past or present.
The music and lyrics in both videos fall to the background for me because the visuals are what grabs my attention immediately. I found myself comparing them to Pablo Picasso and then to Frida Kahlo, and after learning more about the lyrics’ meaning, decided that the cinematography in “No Halo” was a Picasso in that it was disjointed and abstract, but the lyrics in both were Kahlo.
Like Picasso, who is often portrayed as a self-centered person with no loyalties to anyone but himself, I can appreciate his work but I don’t have to like him as a human being. This viewpoint is slightly analogous to my personal spiritual journey back to Catholicism as an indigenous person who went to a boarding school and witnessed atrocities. The Church’s history becomes a Picasso to me in a sense. It is not beautiful.
Frida Kahlo is so incredibly open about her pain. Both “No Halo” and “OMG Rock and Roll” here are sad, disjointed, and after all the chaos and horror, there is reprieve when the choir breaks in. In the movie Frida, starring Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo, her death at the end was, in a way, a triumph because she did things her own way. In my life, the Church is similar to the horror and beauty of Frida Kahlo. It is the beauty of a preserved saint, the architectural beauty of the basilicas and cathedrals of stone and glass, and it is also a pain in my heart that I am reconciling.
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