Music Videos into Stories: "Only For a Moment" by Eric Nam
Stories derived from MVs? Take three!
You know I’m an Eric Nam fan, right? I’ve written how his song “House on a Hill” helped me through a rough period in my life. It’s a testament to his artistry that he’s able to write such beautiful things and share them with the world.
Though the music video for his 2013 song “Heaven’s Door” will always have a place in my heart, I instead chose to highlight the lead music video for the House on a Hill album—the song being “Only For a Moment.”
(It’s quite cool how Nam is dressed as Neo from The Matrix too. But I digress.)
The music video is linked below, so check it out!
Here are some of the lyrics too:
Something so strange
Happened to me last night
Don't know your name
But something inside feels rightThis crazy energy
Rushing inside of me
Wants me to settle down with you
Some serendipity is leading you to me
I wonder if you feel it tooIt was only for a moment
But it felt like time had frozen we were face to face
Was it only me who noticed?
The chemistry between us that had filled this spaceI saw our lives
Flash in my eyes
It was all in my mind
But it was only for a moment
Only for a moment
What story do I see from this music video?
I imagine it would be surreal—like a Studio Ghibli or Satoshi Kon film. You have this train that goes to a place called Elsewhere, caught between worlds, as a young man awakens on the train. He’s startled awake by a voice only he can hear. It’s a woman’s voice.
He meets different passengers while riding the train. Imagine a Murder on the Orient Express-type set of traveling cars. He watches as people get on and off. Sometimes he helps them with their troubles or grievances—discussing matters with them, perhaps, or just listening to their woes about their lives—but over time he begins to realize something’s off. The train doesn’t seem to have a clear destination as it winds through fog and storms and the like, a pair of snowy mountains in the far distance. The journey seems endless.
Then a young woman enters the train at one of the murky stops on the way to Elsewhere.
The young man recognizes her. And her voice—it’s familiar. Too familiar.
He realizes this is the girl he was meant to meet.
But he’s afraid of her, even so. She too walks through the train as if she’s on a mission. She listens to wary travelers as they cry over lost causes and the like. He watches her, wary, as he begins to realize their fates are intertwined in this strange way.
Even so, all they do is exchange glances from time to time. They never speak. It’s too raw, this thread of fate tying them together.
He begins to realize he can hear her voice inside his head. Quietly at first. Then building. In a silent rush.
In their heads is the only place they can speak freely.
But he doesn’t bridge the distance. Again, he’s afraid of what the meeting of their actual selves would do.
As all of this is occurring, the train is winding itself around bends and crooks to Elsewhere. The passengers are getting restless. But why? What awaits at the end of the journey?
Finally—finally—the young man and the young woman speak to each other in the flesh. It’s like a flood breaking. Finally, things feel right.
But that night the train reaches Elsewhere.
Elsewhere is an abyss.
And at the end of it—you wake up.
The young man, after all that trial and error, wakes up in a bed to find everything was a fever dream. He had been in a coma for a year.
But he can still hear the young woman’s voice in his head.
She’s somewhere out there, waiting to be found.
But does he have what it takes to undergo the journey of finding her in the real world, removed from the wonders and whims of Elsewhere’s clutches?
On the Journey Through Elsewhere—coming soon to a bookstore near you.
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