“I fear losing myself, my sense of self, and my identity. I’d really like to show up as my full self,” Don Lifted declares in a warbled voice at the end of his new video for “Brain Fluid.” The clip for the single from the Memphis musician and visual artist is one of intimacy, care, and intention. Multiple people partake in small rituals: reading, cutting hair, playing guitar, saging the home, and chatting with loved ones are some of the acts of care depicted. As the camera pans out, Lifted is in all of these scenes, a considerate and yearning observer, as his psychedelic poetry expands in the background. “Brain Fluid” distills the hard maintenance of love in a simmering brew of ambient rap. “Love ain’t hard to find, only hard to trap it.”
“The song is based around themes of sexual and gender multiplicity, desire and vulnerability,” Lifted says. “It was written from a moment of extreme longing for something that didn’t exist and I feared never would and what it would be like if the moment was presented to me…”
On the video, he continues, “The visuals’ main themes are desire, vulnerability, and sanctuary in connection to space or a partner within a space but also my longing for a shared experience… A partner I do not have, a moment I haven’t shared, a life I haven’t been able to live. I only appear as a specter. A haunting voyeuristic figure that cannot interact but only watch as others live and love as their truest selves. The visual features an all-queer cast, and for reference we spent a lot of time with the work of Deana Lawson, Clifford Prince King, and Jarvis Boyland, among others, to really tap into these ideas and themes in relation to my shared experience or lack there of.”
Watch the video below.
