I took off the cape and discovered somebody else.
I finished a new music video today called “You Think You Know Me.”
It started with a woman in a superhero costume.
That sounds simple enough. Superhero. Cape. Wind. Dramatic pose. The usual cinematic ingredients.
Except I kept looking at her and thinking: What happens when she takes the cape off?
Not destroys it.
Not throws it away.
She just takes it off, hangs it up, and changes.
That turned out to be the whole video.
And, as usual, I didn’t entirely realize what I was making until I was already making it.
2/9
The seed was a friend.
Not her as a literal character. Not a portrait. Not an attempt to tell her story.
My perception of her.
I’ve been fascinated by the difference between the woman everybody sees and the different versions of herself that emerge when she feels safe enough to let the armor down.
The capable woman.
The funny woman.
The intense woman.
The playful woman.
The woman who sends me a song because she thinks I need to hear it.
The woman who can suddenly become vulnerable and then, quite reasonably, decide she has had enough vulnerability for the moment.
And then there is the part I find most interesting:
She changes.
That’s not inconsistency.
That’s being a person.
Lab note:
I have learned that when I try to explain an idea before I make the video, I usually make something much less interesting.
Sometimes the subconscious needs to get there first.
3/9
So I built the visual metaphor around clothing.
The superhero costume is the public role.
The cape is hanging there because the superhero isn’t gone. She simply isn’t wearing that identity right now.
That distinction matters.
I wasn’t interested in making a “real woman underneath the fake superhero” story.
That’s too easy.
The superhero is real too.
So is the woman in the black dress.
So is the woman in pink.
So is the woman removing her boots.
So is whatever version comes next.
The clothes aren’t disguises.
They’re choices.
The interesting question became:
What if being known doesn’t mean somebody has finally figured you out?
What if being known means being allowed to keep changing?
4/9
That led me to the title.
“You Think You Know Me.”
There is a little challenge in that sentence.
Not anger.
Not heartbreak.
More like a raised eyebrow.
You think you’ve got me figured out?
That’s cute.
Then the frame changes.
The clothes change.
The mood changes.
And suddenly the person you thought you understood has moved three feet sideways.
I liked that.
Because there is a difference between seeing someone and defining someone.
I can see something in another person.
I can even see something surprisingly deeply.
But that doesn’t give me ownership of the person I see.
Lab note:
This is one of those places where AI becomes a strange kind of mirror.
I give it an image, a mood, a musical idea, and a handful of instincts.
It gives me something back that occasionally makes me realize what I was actually thinking.
Sometimes the machine is less a generator than a very expensive subconscious therapist.
Fortunately, mine doesn’t send me a bill.
5/9
The closet became the backstage.
That was one of my favorite discoveries.
Rows of clothes.
A cape hanging on a hanger.
A woman choosing what comes next.
Dawn Anima.
Dusk Anima.
Different moods. Different temperatures. Different kinds of feminine energy.
I wasn’t trying to decide which one was the “real” woman.
That’s the trap.
There may not be one.
Or maybe there is, but she’s the one doing the choosing.
That changes the meaning of the costume completely.
The cape isn’t a prison.
It’s an option.
She can put it back on whenever she wants.
And that, to me, is much more interesting than ripping it off and declaring the superhero a lie.
6/9
The eroticism in the video came almost accidentally from that same idea.
Clothes are intimate.
Changing clothes is intimate.
Being watched while changing is intimate.
But I didn’t want the visual language to become “look at this body.”
The point was closer to:
Look at the person choosing what you get to see.
That is a different kind of gaze.
The viewer keeps being invited closer.
And then the video quietly reminds the viewer that proximity isn’t the same thing as access.
You can look.
You can wonder.
You can even recognize something.
But the person in front of you still gets to decide what happens next.
Lab note:
That distinction became more important to me as the edit developed.
I wanted the video to feel inviting without feeling like surrender.
Curious without being confessional.
Sexy without reducing the woman to sex.
Mysterious without pretending mystery is the same thing as depth.
That’s a surprisingly difficult balancing act when your raw material is AI-generated eye candy.
7/9
The tools were pretty straightforward.
Creative direction:
Me, wandering around the subconscious with a flashlight.
Image generation:
Midjourney
Image/video experimentation:
Grok Imagine
Music:
AI-assisted music generation and editing
Video editing:
Kdenlive
And then there was the usual process nobody puts on the glamorous tool list:
Generate.
Reject.
Generate again.
Get something unexpectedly wonderful.
Try to reproduce it.
Fail.
Accidentally make something better.
Wonder why it worked.
Use it anyway.
This is the part I enjoy most? NOt really … until a happy accident occurs.
AI gives me enough control to direct the orchestra, but not enough control to eliminate surprise.
That’s the sweet spot.
I’m not trying to replace the accidents.
I’m hunting for the useful ones.
8/9
The biggest discovery came after the video was basically finished.
I realized the superhero cape wasn’t really about pretending.
It was about agency.
She takes it off.
She hangs it up.
She changes.
And nobody gets to tell her which version is the authentic one.
That became the emotional center of the piece for me.
Maybe we all have capes.
Parent cape.
Professional cape.
Church cape.
Strong-person cape.
Funny-person cape.
The version of ourselves that everybody has gotten accustomed to seeing.
Sometimes those roles are useful.
Sometimes they are even beautiful.
But they are still roles.
And sometimes you need to walk into the closet, close the door, and ask a much simpler question:
Who do I feel like being today?
9/9
The real lesson for me is this:
Knowing someone doesn’t mean putting them in a box.
It means remaining curious.
It means allowing the person you thought you understood yesterday to surprise you today.
And maybe that’s why I like the ending.
There is no grand revelation.
No announcement that we have finally discovered the “real” woman.
She just smiles.
Because tomorrow she might wear something completely different.
That’s the magic of making these little films.
I start with an idea.
I hand pieces of it to a collection of machines.
They misunderstand me.
I misunderstand them.
Something breaks.
Something beautiful appears where I wasn’t looking.
And eventually I realize the video was telling me something I hadn’t quite known yet.
That’s the alchemy.
I’m not just making pictures.
I’m finding out what I meant.
TL;DR:
The cape isn’t the lie.
The cape is one of the choices.
So is everything underneath it.
And if you think you’ve finally figured somebody out…
That’s cute.
Steve Teare
video alchemist
TerminallyBored.Monster
Palouse, Washington USA