Panther Hollow's Walking Fable,
"Running"
AP’s label and production company’s newest release:
Panther Hollow’s single/video “Running”
Written by Carolyn Ambrosich (she/they)
I went running the other day. It felt nostalgic to get my heart beating fast, my shins splintering. It felt like a warm up after school for cross country. Late fall, the air finally cool. I breathed it in, let my lungs warm it gently. I told myself I would run to the end of the road and back. One mile. To get the blood pumping like it used to. It reminded me of a song that Panther Hollow recently released, coincidentally titled “running.”
Panther Hollow is one of my favorite artists, and one of my good friends. I have an affinity for their harmonic, droning vocals, low and resonant. Their lyrics are ones that conjure stories, and pull me toward reflection. “Running” is a song about honoring the pace of one’s life. In New York, where time is a sought after commodity, this notion makes Panther Hollow a bit of a radical.
The song oscillates around a swirling guitar that is accompanied by fuzzy vocals. He sings, “what a pace/ I sustain/ I will stay/ running”. I find myself pondering these lyrics amidst the restructuring of time we as a culture seem to be in. A loosening of the relationship we once held with time. There feels to be more space and a growing openness to the fact that time is indeed an illusion.
The song is accompanied by a music video shot and produced by Julia Zanin de Paula, and Dan Criblez (aka Weeze). The film features Bernardo Ochoa (Panther Hollow) walking through the woods, dragging a chair moving through a scene cast in black and white. There is a sense of solemn acceptance. It reads like an old film or photograph where debutantes dressed in white picnic in the woods. Except the character we are following is unremarkable, just a person with an old chair. At times, they pause to sit or to look out over a stream, unhurried. The film was shot on Super8 tripleX with the black sprocket hole and edges included in the digitizations, making them visible for consideration. These edges lend to the antiquity of the video.
The film encompasses ample negative space giving room for a felt sense of softness. The texture is grainy, it feels as though sand and fuzz are simply crumbling away from it. There is an invitation to see oneself on their own solo journey, and to recognize there is always space for rest if we allow for it. There is a moment where we see his hands holding the guitar around a tree, the chair propped in front. Then suddenly, he disappears. It reminds us that we will all vanish in our own time. This sentiment need not cause panic, on the contrary it can offer peace and an acknowledgment of the natural cycles of the universe.
In the ending scene of the film, we see our character and the chair pause to look at one another. I like to think of them beholding the whole of one another. They recognize the depth and the mundanity of moving through life together. As the camera pans out, we are left with our solitary character, then eventually just the silhouette of the bare trees against the sky.
“Running” is released through Ambient Pasta’s label and production company. You can listen and watch the project through the streaming platforms linked below.