What once was old is new again. A  horrific school shooting that is becoming an all too familiar sight on American news. A 10-year-old song originally written under the most tragic of circumstances.

Amanda Palmer’s song “Strength Through Music”” and its corresponding video are currently being promoted by the singer on social media as a response to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14th.  Coincidentally., Palmer originally filmed the video for the song in 2008 as aresponse to the mass shootings at Columbine High School. The song appeared on her first solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

Via her Bandcamp web site Palmer explains the decision behind the  reemergence of the song and video. ” [It] was shot on location at and featuring students from Lexington High School, in Lexington, Massachusetts. People were shocked and horrified at columbine, and gun laws didn’t change. Newtown happened, and laws didn’t change. Since then, school shootings have become regular. Commonplace. Part of ‘life’. There is a school shooting in the US ALMOST EVERY DAY. It’s got to stop.” The new version of the song and video features the names of those murdered at Stoneman Douglas, Newtown Elementary and Columbine as a response to this ongoing issue.

The video is haunting and foreboding with the sparse nature of the song. Among the obvious symbolism is a strange feeling of immersiveness partly induced by the point-of-view used by the camera.

The  video begins with short striking piano chords and never progresses, speeds up or slows down from this simple droning refrain. The next scenes fade in and out to flashes of Palmer’s face as she seemingly looks out to a point in the distance. These flashes are interspersed with views of the unmistakable tiled ceiling of a school.

Then there is a close up on Palmer’s black lace-up boots taking short tentative steps down the hallway while teenage students run in panic behind her seemingly from whatever Palmer is waking towards. As the song continues we see students hiding behind water fountains, crying on the floor and finally, bodies lying unmoving next to lockers.

The boots keep moving as we see the progression of devastation down the hallway until we see Palmer full-bodied again, standing directly in front of a boy dressed in black. Another student falls prostrate behind the boy in black who is wearing earbuds, while Palmer stands face to face with him whispering the words — “tick, tick, tick.” Then he too falls. We end on her standing in the hallway, surrounded by the bodies of young teens, still repeating the words “tick, tick, tick” before in what is barely a whisper mouthing “boom”. The screen goes black and “enough” is shown followed by the trending hashtag popularized by the victims of the Parkland shootings — #neveragain.

Palmer has announced that any money earned by the song on her Patreon and Bandcamp  pages will be donated to March For Our Lives, a planned demonstration scheduled to take place on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C. and throughout the United States .

Photo credit: Raymond Flotat