Filmed in the childhood home of René Kladzyk (aka Ziemba) in Forestville, MI. Please see symbolic reference statement below for additional information about this video.

Ziemba's debut album Hope is Never is now available in digital/tape/LP via Lo & Behold Records

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Directed by Corey Tatarczuk
Production Design/Concept by René Kladzyk & Corey Tatarczuk
E.P. - David Hale
A.P. - Esmé Wright
Crane Op/A.C. - Coulter Mitchell

Color Grade by Daniel Silverman, MPC NY
VFX by John Shafto, MPC NY

Featuring:
Zola Hale as Ghost René
Chloe Hale as Ghost Anna

Special thanks to Jen Shagawat and Shell Driver @ 94 Jewel St. Studios, Angela Feury, Pamela Kladzyk, Frank Kladzyk, Anna Kladzyk and Jamie Tatarczuk

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With the Fire was written by René Kladzyk
Recorded and mixed at Black Dirt Studio by Jason Meagher
René Kladzyk on vox & keys
Rob Smith on drums
Jason Meagher on guitar
Mastered by Patrick Klem

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With the Fire Symbolic Reference Statement:

The ramshackle yellow house on Cedar street is where most of my dreams are located. It's the setting of my fondest childhood memories, and my terrain of mythic fantasy. It has sat there, uninhabited and decaying for twenty years now, filled with everything that was there when I was seven. The dressers are filled with my clothes, my toys are on the floor, my babysitter's club books on the bookshelves. It's all there-- the couch I spent sick days lounging on, the first piano I played on, and its dying, subsumed by the mold, wasps, raccoons, and decay that call it home now.

For years I have fantasized about paying tribute to the universe of my imagination that is centered around the house in Forestville. I recently went to the house with Corey Tatarczuk,* a super-8 camera**, and a pile of clothing formerly owned by my grandmother Ziemba, including the white suit that my gramma was married in (tailored by my great-grandfather Ziemba). We approached the house as a museum of my lost childhood, with me as docent. I showed Corey and, through her camera, YOU the key sites of my youth. We studied the wall of heights, the verdant ivy covering the barn, and the sweet hugging canopy of the weeping willow tree. We zoomed on the merry-go-round across the street, skipped stones at the crick, and walked the short walk to Lake Huron’s deep blue waters.

In the video two little girls, ghosts of my sister and I, run about the property as friendly fire angels, the shade of their glow pulled from the color of the film burning at each end. These girls are dear friends of mine, the younger, Zola, and I share a birthday- she turned 7 on June 20th, the summer solstice of this year. Shortly after we filmed the little girls for the video, I had a dream where I traveled to Forestville and met my childhood self there. This tiny version of me said that I come to visit her often, and she wasn't surprised to see me.

The With the Fire music video operates as a part of a multisensory self-portrait, linked to my debut full-length album, Hope is Never. There is a fragrance component to this album, a limited batch incense created in partnership with Pretty Hole Collective. The incense contains lilacs, cedar, and lily of the valley from the yard of the yellow house on Cedar street. Its something to burn while listening, a material signifier of the creative capacity of destruction and loss. I recommend burning this fragrance while watching this video. But if you don't have this limited batch incense readily available, perhaps consider lighting a candle. You are marching in a funeral parade of lost childhood, you are strolling through an exhibit of decay nostalgia, you are a witness to something that is already gone and can only be retrieved or held through memory and shadow.

You can go before this sore horizon blinds you

I will show you where our burnished union leads to

Its a home set on scattered kindling made to burn

with the fire with the fire with the fire

You can go before the sick dogs lick your eyes

When you leave I will find a place the embers can die

If you mourn something lost before you can find it

In the fire in the fire in the fire

If you pass through where the pounding rain cleanses you

If you pass beyond the burning bridges split in two

There's a church where all your dreams of death are sanctified

With the fire with the fire with the fire



- René Kladzyk June 22nd, 2016



* Corey and I were graced with the skilled assistance of Esmé Wright and Coulter Mitchell while filming in Michigan. Their presence made a huge difference in this production, and must be attributed to divine providence. Super special thanks to you two.

** Corey requests that I note that we put the tiny Silver Body Nizo Super 8 Camera on a crane in the making of this video.

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