Behind the Track

Inspiration often comes from the weirdest places. In the case of Pimpkiller, I was watching a documentary about the lives of women who become prostitutes; those who stay and the few who escape that life. There was little room in the film for any ‘glass half full’ kind of interpretation. (Although I am aware that people exist who work in the sex trade industry who do it by choice and are not under anyone’s control.)

In this case, all the women were in some form of abusive relationship with the man who was their pimp. Often, the fear of what their pimp would do to them if they ever tried to escape is what kept them from trying. And the feeling that they were unworthy of any other job or person magnified that helplessness. It’s a cycle of abuse and forced dependency very similar to the methods cult leaders use to sink their hooks into their followers.

One of the women managed to escape her pimp, and retold the days afterward when she felt the deeply rooted fear that he would find her again. After living in this tension and isolation for two months she heard the news: her pimp was dead, someone had killed him.

This became the driving force of the song. This emotional cocktail of melancholy, anger, joy, violence, paranoia, and freedom. How do you fit all that into a song? I don’t know. But it’s one of the reasons I felt I needed the help of an incredibly skilled contemporary dancer to get it across. Enter: Sazo.

Behind the Video

It’s the day before Sazo and I are scheduled to film the choreography and I realize something strange: my main VHS camcorder is broken. I begin to think ‘Hmm, maybe it’s glitching because we dropped it during rehearsal last week.’ I check the quality against the other VHS camcorder, and my suspicions are correct. It is either broken or possessed by a poltergeist.

As I run a few tests, I begin to grow attached to the idea that the glitches might add another layer of expression to the video. The next day, we setup two camcorders for all ten of Sazo’s takes. The ‘broken’ one ends up working really well for closeups and moving around Sazo.

It seems to project weird artifacts and black masses onto her skin, growing more expressive as her movements get bolder. In the end, what started as a cheap broken camcorder glitch becomes an essential part of the visuals of the dance and music.

That whole experience made me realize something: take your limits, and turn them into your strengths. That’s your goal. This is what differentiates the style of your work from anyone else. As a Western culture we get so caught up in this idea that we need to overcome our limitations, and get bigger, faster, etc. Maybe the answer isn’t that we always need more, maybe we can do more with less?