Jaye Bartell shares his video for new single ‘If I’m Only For Myself’ taken from his poetic album In a Time of Trouble a Wild Exultation which was released last October. Watch it below!
The video is based off of artist Hollis Frampton’s short film ‘Nostalgia’ where you watch a black and white still of Bartell taken by photographer Erin Taylor Kennedy slowly burn away, go up in flames and disappear above a hot stove.
Bartell says of the track, “The song was inspired by a photo in the newspaper of a sign at a rally in Washington Square Park, around the time the travel ban was first introduced last year. The rally consisted of Muslims and Jews gathered in solidarity against the travel-restriction proposal for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This song is a pledge to people I see and know in my neighborhood, on the the subway — people anywhere, trying to stay afloat and be alive and love their people in this already limited duration we’re given, while overhead, a comparative few try to kill each other over money and take us all with them. Just because you want to die doesn’t mean we all do. The line comes from Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?”
In a Time of Trouble a Wild Exultation was recorded by Bartell last year with producer/engineer Adam McDaniel at Drop of Sun Studios in West Asheville. The album was captured mostly through live performances, experimenting with recording techniques and improvised instruments.
