By Ali Grutchfield
Coughing Up Flowers is a cathartic music video written by Trinity Rose and directed by Lucas J. Takano. Rose’s song illustrates the emotional toll that falling in love can have, especially as a young person trying to navigate the ever-changing world. The true strength of this music video stems from the authenticity with which Rose and Takano depict the hopelessness and vulnerability she feels.
It is often easy to diminish the feelings and challenges young men and women face because they lack life experience. However, this video suggests that it’s their lack of experience that exacerbates fear and loneliness. Rose is even more lost because she’s never been through love or heartbreak before, as the song states, she “doesn’t know what’s fair enough.” The song is tragically relatable because of how honest Rose is in recognizing the damage that’s done when she forces herself into vulnerable positions. She candidly acknowledges that one can never truly tell how someone else feels. Therefore, she has to silently struggle and recognize that the boy could easily not feel the same way and “just slip away.”
Although love is not something easily put into words, Rose and Takano aptly depict the emotional intensity of one’s first love. As the music video progresses, Rose shows how her mental turmoil is manifesting itself as suffocation and scarring. This symbolically highlights the true gravity of experiences during her childhood and adolescence that she was irreparably changed by.
Overall, I’d give Coughing Up Flowers a 4.5/5 stars
Ali Grutchfield is a junior pursuing Film and Television Production at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She spends her time producing both visual and written content for District, the school’s online news platform, being President of the SCAD’s Film Club, producing and editing student films, reading mystery novels, and drinking coffee with her cat, Jingle.
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